“What has José done except ask for freedom from brutality?” Rev. Marc Schlegel-Preheim of First Mennonite Church of Iowa City asked at a protest in front of the Linn County Courthouse in Cedar Rapids on Thursday.
About 100 people were gathered on the steps of the courthouse to support José Yugar-Cruz, a 37-year-old asylum-seeker from Bolivia being held as an ICE detainee in Linn County Jail. The Trump administration intends to deport Yugar-Cruz to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a Central African nation Yugar-Cruz has never been to and to which he has no ties.
Yugar-Cruz has been living at the Catholic Worker House in Iowa City since January, when a federal judge ordered that he be released from Muscatine County Jail, where ICE had been detaining him. Along with the Catholic Worker House, Escucha Mi Voz Iowa (EMV), a nonprofit that advocates for and assists immigrants in eastern Iowa, has been supporting Yugar-Cruz as he has attempted to complete the process of applying for asylum. EMV organized the protest on Thursday.
Before he was detained by ICE for a second time on April 8, Yugar-Cruz had been working around the Catholic Worker House, doing jobs like cleaning dishes for its free breakfast program. As member of EMV, he’s also been speaking out and sharing his story with the assistance of Getsy Hernandez, an EMV organizer who has translated for Yugar-Cruz when he speaks in public.
Hernandez told the protesters on Thursday that Yugar-Cruz has been speaking publicly “to raise awareness to the conditions immigrants are facing in detention centers and to fight for all immigrant families so that no one would ever experience what he did for over a year.”
José Yugar-Cruz fled Bolivia in 2024 after being tortured by corrupt local police officers for refusing to help them with 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 asylum applicants like Yugar-Cruz.
On Dec. 12, Yugar-Cruz filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the administrator of the Muscatine County Jail claiming that continuing to incarcerate him almost a year 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.
Hernandez, who has known Yugar-Cruz since he came to the Catholic Worker House, called him “a natural leader.”
“He’s dependable, he’s kind and he’s one of the most compassionate and good-hearted people I’ve met,” she said.
Standing behind EMV’s “Essential Not Deportable” banner, Hernandez concluded her remarks by saying, “Jose’s case is a constant reminder that immigrants are not disposable. We are hardworking human beings, who strive for safety and better life outcomes.”
Three weeks ago, Yugar-Cruz was contacted by ICE agents and told to report to the Cedar Rapids field office to verify information about his address. When he arrived at the office later that day, ICE agents arrested him.
Yugar-Cruz has been cooperating with immigration authorities and complying with their orders since he arrived in the U.S. He has no criminal record.
“The address check was a ruse,” Katherine Melloy Goettel, one of the attorneys assisting Yugar-Cruz, told the U.S. District Court in Des Moines. “ICE officers arrested [him] at the appointment. When [Yugar-Cruz] called his attorney, the ICE officer refused to tell his attorney what was happening.”
Unable to deport Yugar-Cruz to his home country because of the immigration judge had ruled Yugar-Cruz had legitimate reason to fear for his life if he was returned to Bolivia, ICE had decided to deport him to DRC instead.
As part of its program to massively increase the number of immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers it deports, the Trump administration is paying countries in Latin America and Africa to take deportees that have no connections to their counties. ICE decided not to deport Yugar-Cruz to a Spanish-speaking country, where he would at least be able to readily communicate with people, but to send him to DRC, an impoverished country that has been roiled by bloody conflicts, both internal and with neighboring counties, since the 1990s.
The first group of U.S. deportees arrived in DRC on April 17. All 15 of the deportees were originally from Latin America countries. That same day, the DRC government publicly announced its deal with the Trump administration, saying that any deportees would only be in the country briefly. DRC officials did not expand on what that meant, but some of the deportees told NPR they were being pressured to return to the countries they originally fled from.
Congolese citizens have been objecting to their country’s deal with the U.S., and have organized protests in the capitol city, Kinshasa.
After Yugar-Cruz was arrested by ICE, his attorneys sought an emergency order from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa to stop his deportation to DRC. Judge Stephen Locher issued an order stopping Yugar-Cruz from being removed from Iowa until the court could hold a hearing on whether DHS could lawfully deport him to a third country.
On Monday, Judge Locher lifted his order preventing Yugar-Cruz’s removal. The judge said a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on April 18 that supported the Trump administration’s deportation policies had left him “little choice” in the matter.
“When something like this happens, it should cause us all to pause,” Iowa City Mayor Bruce Teague, one of the speakers at the protest in front of the Linn County Courthouse, said. “Not just to observe, but to reflect on who we are and what we stand for.”
Johnson County Supervisor Jon Green also spoke at the protest.
“We are all here because we recognize that we have a moral duty to our fellow man, to the refugee, to the migrant,” he said.
Green told people that as voters they need to question every candidate they support, to see if they support not just abolishing ICE, but will also work “to prosecute all of these folks who violated people’s human rights.”
“There have to be consequences.”
Before the protesters marched to the Linn County Jail in a show of support for Yugar-Cruz, EMV member Miguel Torres read out a statement from him.
“I didn’t commit any crime. I only came to ask for protection,” Yugar-Cruz said about his long journey to the United States and through its jails as he seeks asylum.
“You are seeing a lot of injustice here, they are sending several people to the Republic of Congo,” the statement continued. “And the truth is, they are including me on this flight anyway, so what they are trying to do with me is make me stay in the Congo and I am afraid to go to this country.”
“The truth is that here I have a new family that is Escucha Mi Voz and the Catholic House, where I lived, and the truth is that you all are a family to me.”
“And I hope you continue fighting with me and continue supporting people like you always have,” Yugar-Cruz concluded. “I really thank you all for all the support you have given me. I know that we are going to win.”
