US attorney pursues effort to deport Bolivian man to Congo

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (Iowa Capital Dispatch) – Federal prosecutors in Iowa are continuing their push to deport to the Democratic Republic of Congo a Bolivian asylum seeker who was unlawfully jailed in Muscatine County.

Court records indicate José Yugar-Cruz, 36, entered the United States from Bolivia in July 2024, fleeing what he said was torture at the hands of police officials involved in the drug trade.

After entering the United States on foot at the Arizona border, he surrendered himself to federal immigration officials and applied for asylum based on the threat of persecution in Bolivia.

In January 2025, a judge ruled the U.S. government could not send Yugar-Cruz back to Bolivia due to the ongoing threat of torture. For the next year, however, immigration officials continued to hold him in jail while looking for a third-party country to which he could be deported.

On Dec. 3, 2025, Yugar-Cruz was transferred from a Minnesota jail to the Muscatine County Jail in Iowa. Nine days later, Yugar-Cruz’s attorney sued the Muscatine County jail administrator, as well as Homeland Security officials, alleging they were violating federal law by continuing to detain Yugar-Cruz after the immigration judge had ruled in his favor.

As part of that lawsuit, Yugar-Cruz’s attorney noted the Trump administration had adopted a practice of deporting people to third-party countries with no guarantee those individuals wouldn’t immediately be sent to their home country, where they faced persecution or torture.

A federal judge in the District of Columbia has ruled the practice amounts to a “widespread effort to evade the government’s legal obligations by doing indirectly what it cannot do directly.”

On Dec. 23, 2025, U.S. District Judge Stephen H. Locher ordered Yugar-Cruz released from the Muscatine County Jail, ruling that his continued confinement was unlawful.

Yugar-Cruz was released, but on April 8, 2026, ICE officials in Iowa contacted Yugar-Cruz at his Iowa City home and asked him to report to their Cedar Rapids office for address verification.

“The address check was a ruse,” one of Yugar-Cruz’s attorneys, Katherine Melloy Goettel, later told the court. “ICE officers arrested (him) at the appointment. When (Yugar-Cruz) called his attorney, the ICE officer refused to tell his attorney what was happening.”

Yugar-Cruz’s attorney filed an emergency motion in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, seeking to immediately block ICE’s acknowledged plans to put their client on a plane bound for the Democratic Republic of Congo.

U.S. District Judge Stephen H. Locher issued an order blocking the deportation and gave the U.S. Department of Justice until April 13 to establish the lawfulness of Yugar-Cruz’s detention.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa David Waterman then argued the government was within its rights to send Yugar-Cruz to Congo, in part because he is subject to a final order of removal by an immigration judge.

In response, Yugar-Cruz’s attorney argued in an April 15 court filing that once her client arrives in Congo, he’s subject to immediate deportation to Bolivia.

“ICE now admits that but for the emergency actions of (Yugar-Cruz’s) counsel and the court, he would be on a plane to the Democratic Republic of Congo today,” Goettel told the court in a motion that seeks to enforce the Dec. 23, 2025, order releasing Yugar-Cruz from jail.

A judge has yet to issue a decision on the matter.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a new international agreement that allows the United States to send to Congo individuals who, without authorization, have come to the United States from third-party countries.

The first flight of U.S. deportees arrived in Congo on April 16 and appears to be the same flight Yugar-Cruz was scheduled to be on.

According to a report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the Trump administration appears to have spent more than $40 million on third-country deportations. The United States is also negotiating a minerals deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo to help gain access to that country’s reserves of certain metals, including cobalt, copper and lithium.