ICE temporarily releases man facing deportation to Congo amid Ebola outbreak

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has temporarily released Jose Yugar-Cruz, a South American man who had been awaiting deportation to the Democratic Republic of Congo, his attorneys said Friday.

Yugar-Cruz was first detained after crossing the border in July 2024. Six months later, an immigration judge ruled he was more likely than not to face torture in his home country and could not be sent back there. ICE continued to detain him until late December 2025, when a federal judge ruled his detention was unlawful, but he was arrested again in April after Congo agreed to accept him. 

On May 17, Yugar-Cruz was still detained in an Iowa jail when the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda a health emergency. As of Wednesday, there were more than 1,000 suspected or confirmed cases and over 240 suspected or confirmed deaths, according to the WHO. 

"Prior to the outbreak and despite protests in Minnesota and in Iowa, the Department of Homeland Security had refused to stop Yugar Cruz' deportation to the DRC or to consider relocation to another country and continent that would assure him a greater degree of safety as a victim of torture," his attorneys wrote in a press release. 

ICE did not respond to CBS News inquiries about Yugar-Cruz's release or about whether it is conducting any deportations to the DRC during the Ebola outbreak. 

Fifteen South Americans were deported to the DRC in mid-April, where they were sent to a hotel outside of Kinshasa, the capital city. Officials from the United Nations' migration agency told them they could either agree to go back to their home countries and stay in the hotel "as long as necessary" while they arranged their return, or remain in Congo and pay for their own living expenses, The New York Times reported. A U.S. federal judge ruled one woman, from Colombia, had been sent to Congo illegally and should be returned to the U.S., since authorities in Congo had said they could not accept her due to her medical conditions. 

Congo's Ebola outbreak is largely concentrated in its Ituri Province in the northeast, about 1,000 miles from Kinshasa. 

Yugar-Cruz's previously planned deportation to Congo is part of a broader Trump administration push to send immigrants to countries they aren't from. The administration has signed agreements with at least 33 countries to accept certain U.S. deportees, according to the monitoring group Third Country Deportation Watch, though the vast majority of third-country removals are to Mexico. 

Immigration policy experts say the diplomatic efforts are more about sparking fear than scaling up deportations. 

"They are an an immigration enforcement tool designed to coerce and threaten people, along with horrible conditions of detention, to basically give up," said Yael Schacher, director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, one of the groups behind Third Country Deportation Watch, which monitors third-country deportations. 

Starting last fall, ICE attorneys ramped up efforts to cut tens of thousands of asylum cases short by moving to deport them to third countries that agreed to adjudicate their asylum claims there, but Third Country Deportation Watch estimates few were actually removed. Instead, after receiving the motion to "pretermit," or end the case without a hearing, about 16% withdrew their asylum claims or agreed to voluntarily depart, a CBS News analysis previously found, and many other cases are stalled on appeal.

Before Congo, ICE previously unsuccessfully tried to remove Yugar-Cruz to Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Mexico and Canada, according to court records.

Yugar-Cruz's detention and planned deportation had sparked an outpouring of support from advocates and members of the surrounding community in Iowa, with many writing letters of support, accompanying him to ICE check-ins and protesting his removal in front of the Linn County Courthouse, the county he was detained in.

"Thank you to everyone who advocated for me and spoke out against these third-country deportations. The fight continues forward," Yugar-Cruz said in the press release. 

His attorneys declined to provide additional comments or make Yugar-Cruz available for an interview following his release. Speaking from detention last month, Yugar-Cruz told CBS News he felt he had been treated like "a person with no value," and as if he had committed a serious crime.