Judge clears ICE’s path to deport asylum-seeker from Iowa to Congo

DES MOINES, Iowa (IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH) – A federal judge has cleared the way for ICE officials to deport a Bolivian asylum-seeker from Iowa to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Noting that José Yugar-Cruz is part of a class of people for whom the Supreme Court has twice issued orders lifting injunctions that prohibited such deportations, U.S. District Judge Stephen H. Locher ruled this week that he had “little choice” but to deny Yugar-Cruz’s motion to have the court block his removal from the United States.

Court records show that Yugar-Cruz, who is from Bolivia, entered the United States on July 8, 2024, at the Arizona border and immediately surrendered himself to law enforcement and was taken into custody.

In October 2024, Yugar-Cruz applied for asylum, citing a threat of torture in his home country. In December 2024, an immigration judge issued a “withholding of removal” order under the Convention Against Torture, based on the torture Yugar-Cruz had previously faced in Bolivia and likely would face again if returned to that country.

Although the federal government did not appeal the immigration judge’s ruling, it opted to keep Yugar-Cruz detained in jail while it searched for another country that would accept him if he were to be deported.

For 17 months, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Yugar-Cruz jailed while the agency tried without success to remove him to Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Mexico and Canada.

In December 2025, Yugar-Cruz took ICE to court, seeking his release and arguing that his indefinite imprisonment was a violation of his rights given his lack of criminal history. The U.S. Department of Justice agreed Yugar-Cruz should be released from the Muscatine County Jail, subject to his continued supervision by ICE.

With his asylum case pending, Yugar-Cruz is detained again

With his asylum application still pending, Yugar-Cruz was released from jail. Days later, the Trump administration finalized a “Third-County Removal Agreement” with the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which pledged that deportees sent there from the United States would not be subject to persecution or torture.

On March 9, 2026, ICE officials learned Congo had formally agreed to accept Yugar-Cruz for third-country removal. On April 8, 2026, Yugar-Cruz was taken into custody during what he expected to be routine, address-verification visit to an ICE field office in Cedar Rapids.

On the day his deportation flight was scheduled to leave the United States, Yugar-Cruz won a temporary stay in the proceedings by arguing the federal government could not legally deport him.

As part of that case, attorneys for Yugar-Cruz argued their client was a member of a certified class in the case D.V.D. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In that case, a Massachusetts court had entered a preliminary injunction blocking the government from removing noncitizens to third countries without first providing those individuals an opportunity to be heard on the matter.

In Monday’s ruling on Yugar-Cruz’s deportation, Locher wrote that the Massachusetts decision is “unquestionably favorable to Yugar-Cruz’s position … The problem for him, however, is that shortly thereafter the United States Supreme Court took the unusual step of granting a stay of the injunction.”

So, although the Massachusetts case is still pending, ICE’s process for deporting individuals to third countries remains legally valid, Locher noted.

“This is all but fatal to Yugar-Cruz’s claim,” Locher wrote. “He is a member of a class of people for whom the Supreme Court has twice issued orders lifting injunctions that prohibited third country removals like the one (the federal government is) attempting to carry out here. In other words, when a different district court tried to do what Yugar-Cruz is asking this court to do, the Supreme Court intervened twice to stop it … The court cannot award relief on a one-off basis that the Supreme Court would not allow to be awarded en masse.”

Some human rights organizations have objected to the United States’ deportations to Congo, citing the armed conflicts, yellow fever outbreaks and widespread poverty in the area.

Two weeks ago, 15 South American migrants and asylum seekers deported from the United States to the Democratic Republic of Congo claimed to be facing pressure to return to their countries of origin where they fled persecution or torture.

Some of the 15 told the Reuters news agency that since being deported, they’d been given no viable options other than going back to their home countries, and are currently stranded in Kinshasa, a city of 15 million people, with no money and no passports.