José Yugar-Cruz, an asylum-seeker from Bolivia the Trump administration has been attempting to deport the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since April, has secured release from ICE custody, Escucha Mi Voz Iowa (EMV) announced on Friday morning. According to the news release from the Iowa City-based nonprofit that assists and advocates for immigrants, Yugar-Cruz was granted temporary release from custody because of the ongoing Ebola outbreak in DRC.
“Thank you to everyone who advocated for me and spoke out against these third-country deportations,” Yugar-Cruz, a member of EMV, said in the group’s written statement. “The fight continues forward.”
Yugar-Cruz fled Bolivia in 2024 after being tortured by corrupt local police officers for refusing to assist their illegal drug operation. He made his way to the U.S., where he has family. Yugar-Cruz crossed the border into Arizona in July. He immediately surrendered to immigration officials and was jailed by ICE. While in custody, he began the process of applying for asylum, because of the threat to his life in his home country.
In December 2024, an immigration court judge held a hearing on Yugar-Cruz’s asylum request, and in January 2025, the judge granted him “withholding-of-removal relief,” preventing his deportation to Bolivia, after finding Yugar-Cruz faced a credible threat of persecution if returned to his home country.
Before the second Trump administration, it would have been common for someone like Yugar-Cruz to be released from custody with orders to check in at the nearest ICE office on a regular schedule while his asylum application was pending. But ICE did not release him.
Yugar-Cruz was sent from Arizona to the Freeborn County Adult Detention Center in Albert Lea, Minnesota. According to court documents, an ICE agent there told him in February last year that he would be released in “15 days or so.” But ICE did not release him. According to Yugar-Cruz, ICE agents later said they would continue to jail him while they worked on deporting him to some country other than Bolivia.
In December 2025, Yugar-Cruz was transferred to Muscatine County jail, which has a contract with ICE to incarcerate detainees. It was there that Yugar-Cruz, with the support of EMV, acquired legal representation through the University of Iowa College of Law’s Immigration Clinic, which provides assistance to immigrants, including those, like Yugar-Cruz, who are applying for asylum.
On Dec. 12, Yugar-Cruz filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the administrator of the Muscatine County Jail claiming that continuing to incarcerate him almost after an immigration judge granted withholding-of-removal relief violated federal law. At the beginning of January, a federal judge agreed and ordered Yugar-Cruz released.
After being released, Yugar-Cruz moved into the Catholic Worker House in Iowa City, where he assisted in its daily activities, doing jobs like cleaning dishes for its free breakfast program. He also spoke out about his treatment by ICE, sharing his story at public events organized by EMV.
At the beginning of April, ICE ordered Yugar-Cruz to report to its Cedar Rapids field office to confirm information about where he was living. When Yugar-Cruz arrived at the office on April 8, he was taken into custody. ICE intended to deport him to the DRC, a Central African nation Yugar-Cruz had never been to and to which he has no connections. Yugar-Cruz was sent to Linn County Jail, where ICE detains some of the immigrants it seizes.
Withholding-of-removal-relief, which Yugar-Cruz has had since December 2024, prevents an immigrant from being deported to their country of origin because it would expose them to persecution or endanger their life. It does not, however, prevent ICE from deporting Yugar-Cruz to a different country, even one accused of human rights violations, and would not prevent that country from sending him back to Bolivia.
Attorneys from Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid representing Yugar-Cruz filed an emergency motion in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa in Des Moines on the day he was seized, seeking to immediately block ICE’s acknowledged plans to put their client on a plane bound for the DRC.
“The address check was a ruse,” attorney Katherine Melloy Goettel 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.”
Judge Stephen Locher issued an order blocking ICE and DHS from removing Yugar-Cruz from Iowa as the legal challenge to its attempt to deport him continued.
ICE seized Yugar-Cruz three days after a deal between the DRC and the Trump administration to allow the U.S. to deport detained immigrants to the country in exchange for payments.
“The U.S. has struck such third-country deportation deals with at least seven other African nations, many of them among countries hit the most by the Trump administration’s policies that have restricted trade, aid and migration,” the Associated Press reported after the Congo deal was announced.
The Trump administration has entered into third-country deportation deals with countries in Latin America, as well as Africa, but ICE does not plan to send Yugar-Cruz to a country where Spanish is the official language. It’s not clear if the third-country deportations the administration started last year conform to international law. Many of the countries involved have poor human rights records.
On April 18, while Yugar-Cruz’s case was still before Judge Locher, the Republican-appointed majority on the U.S. Supreme Court took the unusual step of granting the Trump administration emergency relief in a case from Massachusetts, overturning an injunction by a federal judge stopping the deportation of eight immigrants from Latin America and Asia to South Sudan while they challenged their deportation to a country to which they had no connection.
Nine days later, Judge Locher, saying the Supreme Court decision had left him “little choice,” lifted his order preventing Yugar-Cruz from being removed from Iowa.
But an outbreak of a rare strain of Ebola, for which there is currently no vaccines or other medical treatments, has temporarily stopped the Trump administration from deporting more people to the country. On Tuesday, the WHO reported an estimated 1,077 people in the DRC have been infected with the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola and as many as 238 have died from the disease. Health workers in the country are suffering from a shortage of supplies as they treat people. Disease spread has been centered in an area of the country overrun by armed groups who are part of a decades-long series of insurrections in the country.
Last week, the Trump administration confirmed it has suspended deportation to the DRC. A DHS spokesperson said the department was following the “health and safety guidelines” issued by the State Department in its travel advisory warning Americans not to travel to the DRC. But according to Politico, DHS has other reasons for suspending the deportations.
Politico reported that a Trump administration official granted anonymity to speak freely said there were concerns that “deportation to a country with an Ebola outbreak could be used in a migrant’s defense against deportation. It would add another challenge to the legal setbacks the administration has faced in its bid to deport thousands of people to third-party countries.”
