U.S. Paused Deportation Flights to Ebola Zone but Left Deported Migrants Stranded There. A 78-Year-Old Pastor Is Still Scheduled to Go.

Since the U.S. paused deportation flights to the Democratic Republic of Congo around May 21, the policy has created more confusion than clarity, with different detainees facing wildly different outcomes depending on their destination country, their legal status, and what a given court has ordered.

What the Pause Actually Covers

The Trump administration's temporary halt, confirmed by an anonymous administration official and reported by CNN, applies to general removal flights and third-country removals to the DRC. The DHS did not respond to questions about whether flights to Uganda, South Sudan, and Rwanda would continue, according to The Guardian. The CDC has issued a travel health notice for Uganda, encouraging travelers to practice "enhanced precautions," and the U.S. has placed travel restrictions on passengers arriving from Congo, Uganda, and South Sudan, according to KFF Health News.

Edward Nalwamba, a 78-year-old retired pastor who arrived in the U.S. from Uganda in 2002 and has lived in Colorado, has a scheduled deportation to Uganda. According to Wired, Nalwamba's order of supervision was revoked in September 2025, and he has been in immigration detention for nine months. His lawyers say his health has deteriorated significantly in custody.

Nalwamba's asylum claim is not frivolous on its face. Court documents from 2010, cited by Wired, describe him being taken from his home by armed security forces in 2001 after refusing to instruct his congregation to vote for President Yoweri Museveni, who has held power since 1986. His lawyers argue that returning him to Uganda under current political conditions poses a credible threat. No court has ruled that claim meritless in a final determination.

The Stranded Woman in Kinshasa

The case of Adriana Zapata illustrates how the pause operates selectively. Zapata, a 55-year-old Colombian woman, was sent to Kinshasa before the halt went into effect, despite DRC officials telling U.S. authorities the country could not accommodate her complex medical needs. A U.S. judge ordered her returned. American officials refused, citing the very travel ban they imposed.

"By the government's own logic, if it is not safe for people to come from there to here, it is equally unsafe to send people there," Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and the top Ebola response official at USAID during the 2014-15 outbreak, told The Guardian.

Zapata's attorney, Lauren O'Neal, told the Gothamist: "I'm just really worried about losing her. I don't want her to die before we can get her back here."

At least 37 people have been sent to DRC, Uganda, or South Sudan in recent months, according to independent journalist Gillian Brockell, who tracks third-country removals.

One Case That Went the Other Way

José Yugar-Cruz, a Bolivian asylum-seeker whom ICE had been attempting to remove to the DRC since April, was granted temporary release from custody, Iowa City-based nonprofit Escucha Mi Voz Iowa announced. The release was directly tied to the Ebola outbreak blocking his deportation destination.

Yugar-Cruz's path was already legally complicated. An immigration judge had granted him withholding-of-removal relief from Bolivia in January 2025, meaning he faced a credible threat of persecution if returned home. ICE continued holding him anyway while pursuing a third-country removal to DRC, according to Little Village Magazine. A federal judge ordered his release at the beginning of January after he sued DHS. After that ruling, ICE released him and he moved into the Catholic Worker House in Iowa City.

The Stronger Counterargument

The administration's defenders make a reasonable point: the pause itself demonstrates the government responding to a genuine public health risk, not bulldozing through it. Officials told Politico that immigration agents traveling to Ebola-affected areas could themselves become exposed and spread the virus closer to the U.S. The diversion of all U.S.-bound travelers from the affected region to Dulles International Airport for CDC health screening, reported by KFF Health News, shows the administration taking the outbreak seriously as a domestic biosecurity threat. Requiring deportation flights to pause for the same reason is internally consistent with that logic.

The tension is that the logic cuts both ways: if the region is dangerous enough to warrant a travel ban and mandatory health screening at Dulles, it is dangerous enough to raise serious questions about forced removal to that region.

The Unresolved Question

It is unclear how long the DRC deportation pause will last, and the DHS did not respond to questions about whether flights to Uganda would continue, according to The Guardian. Nalwamba's scheduled deportation to Uganda, if it proceeds as reported by Wired, would test whether the pause's logic — protecting ICE personnel and detainees from Ebola exposure — applies only where officials find it convenient. His attorneys have not indicated a court has intervened to block the flight.