A federal judge has ordered the Polk County Jail to immediately release an asylum seeker, ruling that the Russian immigrant was illegally detained through a “legal fiction” constructed by the federal government. Since July 2025, immigration courts around the nation have been denying bond hearings for people detained in county jails by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Upon his entry to the United States, Kulumbekov was released, or paroled, with the understanding that he would have one year to formally apply for asylum. A few weeks later, in November 2025, ICE agents took Kulumbekov into custody and placed him in the Polk County Jail. Homeland Security then scheduled an immigration-court hearing for him in Texas, mistakenly believing he was being held in Polk County, Texas.