immigrant detention

Iowa Capital Dispatch
June 22, 2026

A judge has ordered the federal government to state why it has jailed, for almost two years, an immigration detainee now being held in the Muscatine County Jail.

A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa by Mutasim Ibrahim Abdoulrahman Nour, a citizen of Sudan, against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Muscatine County sheriff seeks Nour’s immediate release as well as a court order preventing him from being transferred to a detention facility outside of Iowa while the case is pending.

The lawsuit alleges Nour entered the United States on July 7, 2024, and was immediately apprehended by ICE and placed in federal custody at the Freeborn County Detention Center in Albert Lea, Minn. In December 2025, Nour was transferred without warning to the Muscatine County Jail, where he now remains, the lawsuit alleges.