ICE staged sham bond hearing for Iowa detainee Suraj Vasal with 30 minutes' notice and no opportunity to secure counsel

On February 27, 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement gave Suraj Vasal, an Indian asylum-seeker detained at Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa, approximately 30 minutes' notice before a bond hearing conducted via Zoom — with no information about the hearing's purpose until the call began. Vasal had no attorney present. When he asked for additional time to secure legal representation, immigration officials denied the request and proceeded with the hearing, using it to deny him bond on the grounds that his failure to stop at a highway weigh station made him a flight risk and community threat.

The hearing came three days after U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher ordered the immigration court to provide Vasal with a bond hearing within seven days. Vasal, who came to the United States from India four years earlier as an asylum-seeker and had been released on his own recognizance, was arrested on February 11 when Iowa State Patrol stopped his commercial semi-truck on I-80 as part of "Operation ICE Wall," an initiative targeting commercial drivers at weigh stations. ICE had initially denied Vasal any bond hearing whatsoever, citing Trump administration guidance that treated long-term U.S. residents identically to individuals detained at the border.

Vasal's attorney, Alexander Smith, called the February 27 proceeding a "sham imposed on Mr. Vasal with no notice and no reasonable opportunity to retain an attorney or prepare for his bonding hearing," arguing that ICE had engaged in "malicious compliance" with Locher's order. Locher agreed, finding that the government's position — that 30 minutes' notice was acceptable when a detainee's liberty was at stake — tested "the border of bad faith."

Updates

2026-03-24 — Locher ruled sham hearing violated due process, ordered new hearing [3]

U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher ruled that ICE's February 27 bond hearing violated Suraj Vasal's due process rights, finding the government's conduct tested "the border of bad faith." The court found it was not acceptable to force a pro se party to prepare for a liberty-at-stake hearing with at most 30 minutes' notice. Locher ordered a proper bond hearing for the second time.

2026-04-22 — Locher ordered bond hearing a third time after ICE noncompliance [4]

For a third time, Judge Locher ordered ICE to provide Vasal with a proper bond hearing, after immigration officials again failed to produce compliant proceedings. The repeated court orders documented a pattern of ICE resistance to judicial oversight of its detention decisions.