Santos Fredy Perez Recinos is in the Polk County Jail, and the judge on his case wants the government's explanation on paper. Chief Judge Stephanie M. Rose has given the Justice Department until Nov. 16 to say why he is there.
Rose issued the order on Nov. 9, Iowa Capital Dispatch reported, directing the department to answer his lawsuit and file a memo on the factual and legal grounds for its position. As of the Dispatch's Nov. 13 story, that response had not been filed. The department does not comment on pending litigation.
Looking for Someone Else
The lawsuit says ICE officers were trying to locate and arrest a different person on Oct. 28 when they took Perez Recinos instead, because "he matched the profile of the wanted person." They detained him, subjected him to "extensive questioning," and then obtained an administrative warrant.
On that account, the warrant arrived after the arrest, not before it. Matching a profile is not the same thing as being the person officers set out to find. The suit also says Perez Recinos has not engaged in criminal misconduct.
Perez Recinos, a Guatemalan citizen, alleges he entered the United States near Rio Grande City, Texas, in June 2023, when he was 20. He says he was processed as an unaccompanied alien child, taken into custody, and released to his sister's care. More than three years later, the suit says, he was back in federal custody in Polk County.
Release, a Hearing, or a Transfer Bar
The defendants are ICE, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Attorney General Todd Blanche and Polk County Sheriff Kevin Schneider. The case sits in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. The courthouse is in Des Moines.
Perez Recinos wants the court to take jurisdiction, order his immediate release or a bond hearing, and bar the government from moving him out of the Southern District while the case is pending. At the hearing he is requesting, the lawsuit says, the government would have to show he is a flight risk or a danger to the community.
Rose has ordered an explanation, not a release. A filing deadline and a decision on the detention are different events. Only the first one is on the calendar.
A Jail With a Longer Docket
Polk County is already a familiar defendant in this fight. In January, Iowa Capital Dispatch reported that available records showed the county, ICE and the Department of Homeland Security named in at least three additional cases then recently filed in the same district. That report also said more than 300 federal judges had rejected the administration's "mandatory detention" theory in more than 1,600 cases. Nothing in the reporting on Perez Recinos says Rose has ruled on that theory in his case.
Other Polk County Jail lawsuits have already produced orders, and not all of them traveled well. In January, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger found that ICE detained Arsen Kulumbekov 32 months after he entered the country, not while he was in the process of entering. "Kulumbekov is being unlawfully detained," she ruled, and she ordered his immediate release. KCRG reported the decision.
Bond, when it arrives, has sometimes meant an actual exit. The January Dispatch report said Maria Enriquez Reyes was released from custody three days after being granted bond, on $6,000. A hearing date is not that outcome. On Feb. 24, a district judge gave the immigration court seven days to provide Polk County detainee Suraj Vasal a bond hearing. His attorney later alleged the Feb. 27 proceeding was something else. "The (government's) 'bond hearing' was a sham imposed on Mr. Vasal with no notice and no reasonable opportunity to retain an attorney," the lawyer said, KCRG reported.
The request to keep Perez Recinos in the district is not an abstract venue clause. In a separate case, Iowa Capital Dispatch reported that ICE transferred Pardeep Saini from Iowa to Nebraska on April 1 despite a court order barring his removal from the district while his case was pending. Archer approved that transfer almost two weeks after the blocking order. Ebinger later found ICE officer Quintin Erdman in civil contempt for knowingly and willfully violating a court order. The same June report said two federal judges in Iowa had sharply criticized government officials for repeatedly violating the law in immigration cases.
Nov. 16 is the day the government's account of this arrest is supposed to be in the Des Moines court file: a profile match, questioning, and a warrant obtained afterward. Perez Recinos, as of Nov. 13, was still in the Polk County Jail. The deadline is not a ruling. It is the next thing the government has to produce.
