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After 23 months in ICE custody, Sudanese man seeks release from Muscatine County Jail

on Tue, 06/23/2026 - 00:45   by Clark Kauffman

Iowa Capital Dispatch
June 22, 2026

A judge has ordered the federal government to state why it has jailed, for almost two years, an immigration detainee now being held in the Muscatine County Jail.

A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa by Mutasim Ibrahim Abdoulrahman Nour, a citizen of Sudan, against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Muscatine County sheriff seeks Nour’s immediate release as well as a court order preventing him from being transferred to a detention facility outside of Iowa while the case is pending.

The lawsuit alleges Nour entered the United States on July 7, 2024, and was immediately apprehended by ICE and placed in federal custody at the Freeborn County Detention Center in Albert Lea, Minn. In December 2025, Nour was transferred without warning to the Muscatine County Jail, where he now remains, the lawsuit alleges.

Muscatine County’s agreement to jail ICE detainees remains secret

on Sun, 02/22/2026 - 03:47   by Clark Kauffman

Iowa Capital Dispatch
February 20, 2026

Muscatine County, which has a contract to hold immigration detainees for the federal government, is refusing to publicly disclose its copy of that contract.

In recent months, Muscatine County’s jail administrator has been named in five lawsuits related to the county’s agreement to jail some of the immigrants who are picked up in Iowa by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Like other Iowa counties, Muscatine County has a contract with ICE to house those individuals in return for payments from the federal government. That contract, and the county’s detention of the immigrants, have been the subject of five civil lawsuits and an alleged ethics complaint concerning former Muscatine County Attorney James Barry, who resigned last year.

Judge orders Muscatine Co. jail release ICE detainee

on Fri, 01/16/2026 - 02:31   by Clark Kauffman

by Clark Kauffman, Iowa Capital Dispatch
January 15, 2026

A federal judge has ordered the Muscatine County Jail to release an ICE detainee who had been incarcerated for almost a year after a judge ruled in his favor on an asylum request.

Court records indicate Jose Yugar-Cruz, 36, entered the United States in July 2024 after fleeing his home country of Bolivia. In court filings, Yugar-Cruz alleged that while living in Bolivia, he operated a small business and had “refused to facilitate the drug trade by police officials” who then detained him and tortured him.

In the court filings, Yugar-Cruz said he fled to Mexico, entered the United States on foot at the Arizona border, and then “sought out and surrendered” himself to federal immigration officials. He was then taken into custody and jailed, after which he applied for asylum based on the threat of persecution in Bolivia.

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