The attorney for an immigration detainee held in the Polk County Jail says federal officials maliciously staged a “sham” court hearing orchestrated to keep his client behind bars.
The case involves Suraj Vasal, who four years ago came to the United States from India seeking asylum and was then released on his own recognizance.
Court filings indicate that on Feb. 11, 2026, Vasal was driving a commercial semitruck on Interstate 80 in Iowa when he failed to stop at a weigh station. Iowa State Patrol Trooper Nathaniel Rippey pulled Vasal over, ticketed him, and then made an “immigration inquiry” to have Immigration and Customs Enforcement check Vasal’s status.
According to court filings by Blake W. DeVary, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer based in Des Moines, ICE officers took custody of Vasal during the traffic stop and eventually transferred him to the Polk County Jail, where he remained as of Monday.
Vasal’s attorney, Alexander Smith, has taken ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and Polk County Jail Administrator Cory Williams to court over the matter. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says it had a valid warrant to detain Vasal based on the criminal act of failing to stop at the weigh station.
Initially, Vasal was denied a bond hearing, with the Omaha immigration court relying on the Trump administration’s position that people who have lived in the United States for months or years are subject to the same sort of “mandatory detention” faced by people who are apprehended at the border.
That legal theory has been rejected by judges in hundreds of U.S. District Court cases, but is still being used by immigration judges to deny detainees a bond hearing unless a district court judge intervenes and orders such a hearing.
On Feb. 24, 2026, a district court judge gave the immigration court seven days in which to provide Vasal with a hearing where he could make his case for release on bond while his deportation case is pending.
According to Smith, ICE agents approached Smith in his jail cell at 10 a.m., Feb. 27, and told him that he was to appear, via Zoom, for a hearing of some kind in 30 minutes. Vasal participated in the hearing, which turned out to be the court-ordered bond hearing he was initially denied.
At the hearing, Vasal asked for more time so he could arrange for legal representation. Smith alleges the court denied the request and proceeded with the hearing, at which ICE officials argued that Vasal’s failure to stop at the weigh station suggested he was both a flight risk and a danger to the community as evidenced by his lack of respect for the law.
Vasal argued he had no criminal record, was employed as a commercial truck driver, paid taxes and had a family. The immigration judge concluded he was a flight risk and denied him bond.
Attorney seeks new hearing and legal fees
Smith has now gone back to district court, arguing that ICE and the immigration court engaged in “malicious compliance” with the district court’s Feb. 24 order.
“The (government’s) ‘bond hearing’ was a sham imposed on Mr. Vasal with no notice and no reasonable opportunity to retain an attorney or prepare for his bond hearing,” Smith argued in court filings.
He is asking the district court to order federal officials to grant Vasal an “actual bond hearing, with more than 30 minutes’ prior notice, where he has the opportunity to retain an attorney and prepare for the hearing and meet his burden of proof.”
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, David C. Waterman, is resisting that request, arguing that because of the immigration judge’s busy schedule, she would have risked missing the seven-day deadline for a hearing had she granted Vasal’s request for a delay in the proceedings.
In response, Smith argues that Vasal’s immigration attorney called ICE on the morning of Feb. 27, prior to the hearing, and was falsely informed that no bond hearing was scheduled for that day.
Smith is also seeking the payment of $2,862 in attorney’s fees in the case, arguing the federal government is continuing to deny bond hearings on a legal theory the courts have repeatedly rejected.
“It is not that hard to interpret the statute,” Smith told the court recently. “The (government) has been told for about six months how to interpret it.”
As part of the same case, Smith had requested an evidentiary hearing at which he could question DeVary, the ICE officer, under oath about the basis for concluding that a weigh-station violation — an offense for which there is no possible jail sentence — is evidence that an individual poses a danger to the community and is subject to mandatory detention.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher denied Smith’s request for a hearing, ruling that ICE’s rationale for detaining Vasal was “not material” to the one question before him, which was whether Vasal was entitled to a bond hearing in immigration court. After ordering such a hearing, Locher advised Smith he could pursue the issues related to Vasal’s detention at the bond hearing in front of an immigration judge.
In addition to ICE, Homeland Security and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, the defendants in the case include Polk County Sheriff Kevin Schneider and Polk County Jail Administrator Cory Williams, all of whom have denied any wrongdoing.
