Nicaragua man seeks return to Minn. after deportation to the Central African Republic
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A Minnesota resident who immigrated from Nicaragua is asking a federal judge to allow him to return to the state, after the U.S. government deported him to the Central African Republic.
At a hearing in federal court Friday, his attorneys argued that his initial detention and deportation to a third country, was illegal.
Kenis Lopez Gonzalez arrived in Minnesota in 2022 and was living in Shakopee. He was arrested in mid-January, during the height of Operation Metro Surge, and moved from jail to jail across the U.S. A judge had barred him from being deported to Nicaragua, since he fears persecution from the government there.
Advocates for Lopez at the Twin Cities organization Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL) said they’d kept in touch Lopez during his detention, but lost track of him in August. Then, in September, they found him with the help of other activists. He is living in a facility in Bangui in the Central African Republic – a country that the U.S. government discourages visiting due to unrest, crime and terrorism.
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Lucho Gomez, who works at CTUL, said Lopez was attending all of his immigration hearings and should not have been removed from the U.S.
“Kenis is a father, Kenis is a construction worker, and he was taken from us,” Gomez said. “We have missed him every day since, and up until that point, he had been doing everything right.”
Lopez’s attorney Courtney Moran spoke outside the federal courthouse in St. Paul after Friday’s hearing. She hopes judge Jeffrey Bryan orders his return to Minnesota.
“We're asking for him to be placed back in the position that he was in before he was unlawfully arrested and then ultimately unlawfully removed,” Moran said. “He was living in Minnesota as a productive member of his community, and we're asking him to be returned back here to that status.”
The Central African Republic is one of several countries that has an agreement with the U.S. to accept third country deportees – people who are removed from the U.S. but brought somewhere besides their home country. The legality of third country deportations is the subject of an ongoing Supreme Court case, which is scheduled to be heard in December.
Attorneys for the U.S. government had asked the federal court to wait to decide Lopez’s case until the Supreme Court ruled. Advocates for Lopez said that’s too long to leave him in limbo in a foreign country.
After Friday’s hearing, advocates for CTUL read a statement that Lopez had sent from the Central African Republic.
“I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your tremendous support, for fighting for my return to the United States, and for giving me hope at a time when I was completely vulnerable,” Lopez said, in his statement translated to English by CTUL advocates.
Judge Bryan said he plans to issue a ruling soon.
