In a sharply worded ruling, a judge in Iowa 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 recent 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.
