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A federal judge in Minnesota has refused to put his third-country deportation return order on hold, so the government must keep working to bring Kenis Lopez Gonzalez back from the Central African Republic while it appeals. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan denied the administration’s emergency stay request late Monday, FOX 9 reported, concluding that the danger Lopez faces in Africa far outweighs what it would cost to fly him home. Lopez, a Nicaraguan man from Shakopee, was deported in August to a country where he has no ties, even though an immigration judge had barred his removal to Nicaragua.
The denial matters because a stay was the government’s fastest way to stop the clock. Bryan’s Oct. 30 preliminary injunction set a series of deadlines for arranging Lopez’s travel and parole, with joint status reports every seven days. When DHS asked the judge to pause that order, those deadlines were at risk. They now stand unless the Eighth Circuit intervenes. FOX 9, which first reported the ruling, cited a source who said the government could ask the appeals court directly for a stay. No such motion had been reported as of Tuesday morning.
The government made two arguments. According to FOX 9, it said returning Lopez would cost the agency too much money while the appeal is pending. MPR News reported that U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen also urged the court to wait for the Supreme Court, which MPR said plans to hear a third-country deportation case in December, and noted that courts currently allow such removals. The cost argument was always the weaker of the two. Under the four-part test from Nken v. Holder, a party seeking a stay must show irreparable harm, and courts rarely treat routine compliance expenses as that kind of harm. The pending Supreme Court case is the stronger card, and it is likely to be the centerpiece of any Eighth Circuit motion.
Bryan’s original order, however, does not depend on how the justices resolve third-country removals. He found that ICE likely violated its own regulation, 8 C.F.R. 241.13, when it revoked Lopez’s supervised release in January during Operation Metro Surge without the required notice. That narrower footing likely made the request to wait for the Supreme Court less persuasive, and it gives the appeals court a reason to treat this as a dispute about one unlawful arrest rather than a challenge to the policy itself.
On the other side of the scale, Lopez’s situation is concrete. MPR News reported, citing his declaration and an interview, that he is housed in Bangui by the International Organization for Migration, has had malaria and lives with daily power and water outages. The State Department rates the Central African Republic at Level 4, “Do Not Travel,” its highest warning. His lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, described the government’s stance to MPR this way: “once the person steps off the plane, we’ve washed our hands of it.”
Lopez’s case is one of several in which judges have ordered people brought back from countries they never lived in, including a Ghana-to-Mali case testing withholding protections. Compliance has been the recurring problem: in an earlier Equatorial Guinea case, the government said ten days after a return order that it could not confirm where the man was being held. MPR reported that Lopez’s return could take a couple of weeks, or longer if the process stalls. The weekly status reports will show whether the parole request and travel documents are actually moving, and the next filing to watch is any emergency stay motion at the Eighth Circuit.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources: FOX 9, “Judge rejects Trump Administration request to delay deported man’s return to Minnesota,” Nov. 10, 2026; MPR News, Nov. 6, 2026 (updated Nov. 9); Order granting preliminary injunction, Lopez Gonzalez v. Mullin, No. 26-cv-04507 (D. Minn. Oct. 30, 2026); 8 C.F.R. 241.13; State Department, Central African Republic travel advisory.
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