Clark Kauffman is deputy editor at Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.
In a sharply worded ruling, an Iowa judge has taken federal officials to task for insisting on a court order before complying with the law and releasing a man from the Muscatine County Jail.
In a March 11 court ruling, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger told the U.S. Department of Justice that it was “untenable that federal officials refuse to meet their obligations to follow the law” by knowingly incarcerating a man in the Muscatine County Jail in violation of his due process rights.
The ruling stems from a case involving Andrei Bankevich of Minneapolis, who left his home country of Belarus in August 2021, seeking asylum in the United States.
Bankevich, who was politically active in Belarus, has said that he was fleeing persecution from the country’s authoritarian regime.
Under the provisions of the Convention Against Torture treaty, Bankevich was eventually granted relief from being deported back to Belarus, but with the understanding that he couldn’t remain in the United States and would eventually be relocated to a third country.
In February 2025, however, he was arrested in Minnesota on a drunken driving charge, jailed, and then turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He remained jailed in Minnesota until December 2025, when the Trump administration and U.S. Department of Homeland Security initiated Operation Metro Surge, in which ICE officers began picking up and detaining thousands of individuals in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.
Court records indicate ICE officials quickly ran out of jail cells and detention rooms in the Twin Cities area and, as a result, Bankevich was sent to Iowa’s Muscatine County Jail on December 3, 2025.
On March 3, Bankevich’s Des Moines attorney, Alexander Smith, sought relief from the courts, noting that his client had been incarcerated for more than a year and that under federal law, an individual who is already subject to a final order of deportation can’t be held in jail for more than six months.
“Absent an order from this court, (Bankevich) will likely remain detained for many more months, if not years,” Smith told the court, alleging his client’s due process rights were being violated.
In response to Smith’s request for an order seeking his client’s immediate release, U.S. Attorney David C. Waterman of the Southern District of Iowa told the court that “ICE headquarters” had been working on potential third-country removals for Bankevich since September 2025 and conceded Bankevich was being illegally detained.
However, Waterman told the court, ICE was not going to release Bankevich from the Muscatine County Jail unless it was first ordered to do so.
That stance drew the ire of Judge Ebinger, who noted that the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Homeland Security and ICE were “aware of what the law requires,” but appeared unwilling to comply, absent an order forcing them to do so.
“ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations implies it will continue to violate Bankevich’s fundamental rights — and the law — and will not release Bankevich until a court orders it to do so,” Ebinger observed in her March 11 ruling. “Such an Order should be unnecessary. Nonetheless, because of Federal Respondents’ intransigence, the Court now orders Bankevich’s release as set forth below.”
As part of her order, Ebinger also noted that Waterman’s assertion that ICE headquarters had been working on Bankevich’s release and deportation was “unsupported by any specific facts or documentation” and, in any event, such a claim did not support the federal government’s “prolonged and seemingly interminable detention” of Bankevich.
In her ruling, Ebinger said it appeared the government had chosen not to “meaningfully defend their actions” and had opted instead to look to the court “to demand its adherence to the law. It is untenable that federal officials refuse to meet their obligations to follow the law without a specific judicial mandate to do so.”
As part of her order, Ebinger also stated that she would entertain any future motions by Bankevich’s attorney to have the government pay his client’s legal fees and associated costs in the matter.
The Iowa Capital Dispatch was not able to reach either Waterman or his office’s public information officer on March 20.
Smith, Bankevich’s attorney, said he appreciated Ebinger’s ruling but remains concerned about the implications of the federal government’s actions.
“We think Judge Ebinger was absolutely correct on this,” he said, “and yet, honestly, it’s scary if we have to rely on court orders like this and can’t simply rely on ICE to obey the law. If they’re not following the law, and they are unwilling to do so without a federal judge telling them to follow the law, well, then I have to be concerned about other people being unlawfully detained… You know, a lot of these people don’t speak English, or don’t have the knowledge to go and get a local attorney for these kinds of cases. There are parts of the system that just break down when ICE isn’t following the law unless a judge orders them to.”
Full text of U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger’s March 11 order granting Andrei Bankevich’s petition for writ of habeas corpus: