A federal judge has ordered the Polk County Jail to immediately release an asylum seeker, ruling that the Russian immigrant was illegally detained through a “legal fiction” constructed by the federal government.
Since July 2025, immigration courts around the nation have been denying bond hearings for people detained in county jails by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The denials are based on the Trump administration’s newly adopted legal theory that longstanding federal laws require that ICE detainees who are at risk of being deported be held in jail without the possibility of bond.
As reported by Politico, more than 300 U.S. District Court judges in 1,600 cases have rejected that theory, finding the new interpretation of the law is contrary to ICE’s own regulations, its published enforcement guidelines, previous court rulings, and “the overall logic” of the nation’s immigration system.
Even so, Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice have continued to use that interpretation of the law to argue for mandatory detention in cases where immigrants have lived in the United States for months, years or decades.
Some of the immigration judges — who are not part of the Judicial Branch and instead function as administrative employees of the Executive Branch led by the president – continue to deny detainees bond hearings unless otherwise ordered by a federal judge in U.S. District Court.
One such case involves 26-year-old Arsen Kulumbekov, a Russian immigrant who came to the United States in March 2023 through the so-called “CBP One” process that at the time allowed migrants, at U.S. ports of entry, to request asylum or other legal pathways to residency.
Upon his entry to the United States, Kulumbekov was released, or paroled, with the understanding that he would have one year to formally apply for asylum. After filing for asylum in 2024, Kulumbekov was granted authorization to work in the United States and, by all accounts, he complied with the requirements of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to remain in the United States while his asylum case was pending.
Court records show that at some point, ICE issued an undated notice canceling Kulumbekov’s asylum application, and then forwarded his information to immigration court. In October 2025, ICE notified Kulumbekov that he was considered an alien who had been apprehended while in the process of entering the United States and that he was therefore subject to being detained without bond.
A few weeks later, in November 2025, ICE agents took Kulumbekov into custody and placed him in the Polk County Jail. Homeland Security then scheduled an immigration-court hearing for him in Texas, mistakenly believing he was being held in Polk County, Texas.
Kulumbekov then took Polk County, ICE and Homeland Security to U.S. District Court, where a judge ordered Homeland Security to show why Kulumbekov was not being unlawfully detained and then barred the agency from moving Kulumbekov outside Iowa’s Southern District without first giving the court notice and offering Kulumbekov a chance to be heard on the matter.
In response, the U.S. Department of Justice argued Kulumbekov was subject to mandatory detention without a bond hearing, citing the Trump administration’s new legal theory.
On Jan. 20, 2026, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger ruled against the government, citing the fact that ICE detained Kulumbekov 32 months after he entered the country, and not while he was in the process of entering. As such, Ebinger ruled, Kulumbekov was not subject to mandatory detention.
Citing previous case law on the subject, Ebinger characterized the Department of Justice’s position in the matter as a “legal fiction.” She also noted that upon entry to the United States, Kulumbekov had been paroled for one year, had successfully completed the term of his release, and had met the requirements of Homeland Security while his case for asylum proceeded.
“Kulumbekov is being unlawfully detained,” Ebinger ruled, ordering his immediate release from the Polk County Jail.
The judge then took the additional step of barring the U.S. Department of Justice from using the same “mandatory detention” theory to deny Kulumbekov bond in any subsequent proceedings they may bring against him.
Andrew Kahl of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District Iowa is the lead attorney for the government in the Kulumbekov case. He declined to comment on the judge’s ruling or the DOJ’s handling of the case.
