A federal judge in St. Paul on Friday, October 30, granted the return to Minnesota of a Nicaraguan construction worker who was deported in August to the Central African Republic — a country he had never lived in — in what is known as a “third-country deportation,” the man's attorney told WCCO (CBS Minnesota) early Friday evening. The ruling, reported by the attorney after a day of arguments in the St. Paul federal courthouse, makes Kenis Lopez, 44, one of the few deportees ordered brought back while the legality of third-country removals heads for the U.S. Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear arguments on the policy in December.
Source: WCCO / CBS Minnesota, via EuropeSays, Oct 31, 2026
Supporters rallied outside the courthouse while the judge heard arguments on why Lopez should be allowed to return. “We want to bring Kenis back home, and we want him home now,” said Lucho Gomez, who knows Lopez personally, before the decision. Both men are members of CTUL, a Minneapolis workers' center that has been helping people detained during the federal enforcement surge in Minnesota. Lopez's attorney told WCCO the judge granted his return; the government has not, in the reporting available Friday night, published its own account of the order, and the practical question — when a flight back will actually happen — was not answered in that reporting.
Source: WCCO / CBS Minnesota, via EuropeSays, Oct 31, 2026
Who Kenis Lopez is, and how he got to a cell in Africa
Lopez — named in fuller Minnesota reporting as Kenis Lopez Gonzalez, a Shakopee man — fled political persecution in Nicaragua and turned himself in to immigration authorities when he arrived in the United States, according to Minnesota reporting on his case. He arrived in Minnesota in 2022 and has worked in construction since. An immigration judge had earlier ruled that he could not be deported back to Nicaragua, Minnesota reporting on the case says — the protection that makes a third-country removal, rather than a return home, the only route the government took.
Source: Pilot Independent (Minnesota), via EIN Newswire, Oct 2026
He was arrested by ICE agents in January, on his way to work, during Operation Metro Surge, the federal enforcement operation in Minnesota. Lopez told WCCO, speaking Friday from detention in the Central African Republic through a translator, that he has no criminal record in the United States, and that an ICE agent told him his paperwork was fraudulent. He said he was then held in detention centers in Texas and other states. His account of the arrest itself is his own allegation: he said agents questioned him roughly and were not polite, that he was physically threatened, and that agents shot rubber bullets at him. Those claims are reported here as his allegations, not as findings.
Source: WCCO / CBS Minnesota, via EuropeSays, Oct 31, 2026
In August he was sent to the Central African Republic. He said he told officials he feared for his life and his safety, and that the country was not his. He remains, as of Friday's ruling, held at a detention center there. The Central African Republic is one of more than 30 countries that have agreed to accept third-country deportees from the United States. The U.S. State Department warns Americans not to travel there, citing widespread insecurity. The Trump administration deported a group of about 20 migrants to the country in June, and CBS News obtained government documents showing more deportation flights to Africa in late August.
Source: WCCO / CBS Minnesota, via EuropeSays, Oct 31, 2026
When the United States cannot — or decides not to — deport a person to their home country, it may send them to a third country that has agreed to accept them, even one where they have never lived and may know no one. An immigration judge had ruled Lopez could not be sent back to Nicaragua; the government sent him to the Central African Republic instead.
The wider policy, documented by Human Rights Watch
Lopez's case sits inside a system that Human Rights Watch examined in a report published October 8, 2026. HRW said the U.S. government transferred more than 500 people to third countries in Africa between February and July 2026 because they could not safely be deported directly to their countries of origin, involving Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini and South Sudan. Researchers interviewed 24 transferred people, who described being given little information about their destinations and limited chances to challenge the removals; some said they learned where they were being sent only after arriving, and some were detained after arrival. HRW warned the practice raises concerns under the international principle of non-refoulement — the rule against returning people to places where they face persecution, torture or other serious harm. Those findings are HRW's, reported here with attribution.
Source: Human Rights Watch report, Oct 8, 2026, summarised Oct 30, 2026
The Supreme Court's role frames everything else. In September the court temporarily allowed the administration to resume third-country deportations while it considers the case, and arguments are scheduled for December. Friday's St. Paul order is therefore an individual remedy inside a policy that remains, for now, in force nationally: one judge ordering one man brought back from Bangui, while the justices prepare to decide whether the system that sent him there is lawful at all.
Source: WCCO / CBS Minnesota, via EuropeSays, Oct 31, 2026
Why this matters beyond one case
For immigrant workers — including the construction workers, truckers and warehouse staff among this site's readers — the case turns on a sequence worth understanding plainly. A man with an immigration judge's protection against return to his own country, and, by his account, no U.S. criminal record, was arrested on his way to work, moved through detention centers in Texas and other states, and flown to a detention center in a country the State Department tells Americans to avoid. Every step in that sequence was the government's choice under a policy whose legality is still undecided. His supporters' argument, made outside the courthouse on Friday, is that if that sequence can happen to Lopez, the December Supreme Court case is not an abstraction for any worker whose papers are ever questioned at a traffic stop or a job site.
Source: WCCO / CBS Minnesota, via EuropeSays, Oct 31, 2026
What happens next
Three things now run at once. First, the return itself: the judge has granted it, according to Lopez's attorney, but no timeline for a flight from the Central African Republic to Minnesota was reported Friday night, and returns of this kind depend on the government organising transport for a man it deported. Second, the government's response: it can comply, or it can seek to challenge or narrow the order, as it has in other return cases. Third, December: the Supreme Court arguments on third-country deportations, which will decide the policy Lopez's case was caught in — for him, possibly after he is already home; for the more than 500 people HRW counted in Africa, the decision will decide what process they were owed.