By Clark Kauffman, Iowa Capital Dispatch
In a highly unusual move, the attorney for a Polk County immigration detainee is asking a federal judge to hold the federal government in contempt for denying her client his due process rights.
As part of that same case, the U.S. Department of Justice is objecting to what it views as a request for sanctions against an Omaha-based immigration judge who once worked for Homeland Security and now denies claims for asylum at a much higher rate than her colleagues around the nation.
The case involves the asylum claim of 25-year-old Philander Dambreville of Urbandale, a native of Haiti who has been in the United States since January 2024.
As part of what the U.S. Department of Justice calls a “routine screening” of Iowa jail inmates to locate potential deportees, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials encountered Dambreville in the Polk County Jail on Nov. 18, 2025.
At the time, Dambreville was facing misdemeanor charges of public intoxication and interference with official acts, stemming from his arrest outside an Urbandale apartment building where police were responding to a disturbance.
Dambreville ultimately pleaded guilty to a public intoxication charge, and the interference charge was dismissed. Before he was released from jail, however, ICE officials determined he was in the United States without authorization and issued an “immigration detainer” on him, essentially holding him in the county jail indefinitely while the Department of Homeland Security initiated deportation proceedings.
Days later, in immigration court, Dambreville was denied a bond hearing at which he could have argued for release while his request for asylum was processed. That denial was based on the Trump administration’s position, adopted last summer, that federal law mandates the detention of all individuals suspected of having entered the country illegally, even if they’ve been living and working in the United States for years or decades.
Dambreville’s lawyer, Jessica Donels, took Homeland Security, the Omaha Immigration Court and the Polk County Jail to U.S. District Court over the matter, arguing that the federal government was denying her client his due process rights and that “without relief from this court, Mr. Dambreville faces months, or even years, in immigration custody, separated from his family and his community.”
Since July 2025, more than 300 U.S. District Court judges in 1,600 cases have rejected the government’s argument, finding the new interpretation of the law is contrary to ICE’s own regulations, its published enforcement guidelines, previous court rulings, and “the overall logic” of the nation’s immigration system.
Even so, Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice continue to use that interpretation of the law to argue for mandatory detention. Immigration judges — who are not part of the Judicial Branch and instead function as administrative employees of the Executive Branch led by the president – are continuing to deny detainees bond hearings unless otherwise ordered by a federal judge in U.S. District Court.
Bond hearing questioned by attorney
On Jan. 12, Chief District Judge Stephanie M. Rose issued a ruling ordering the federal government and the immigration court to provide Dambreville with a bond hearing.
Court records show the bond hearing was held on Jan. 14 before Immigration Judge Alexandra Larsen. At the hearing, Department of Justice lawyers argued Dambreville was a danger to the community, citing his November arrest, and that he posed a flight risk.
According to court filings by Dambreville’s attorney, Larsen questioned why the government shouldered the burden of proof in arguing against Dambreville’s release, and then, without detailing the underlying rationale for her decision, said, in effect, “Whoever has the burden of proof, I find that Mr. Dambreville is a risk of flight and a danger to the community.”
That ruling resulted in Donels, Dambreville’s lawyer, going back to U.S. District Court where she recently filed papers seeking to have the government held in contempt for failing to comply with Rose’s order by denying Dambreville his due process rights during the bond hearing.
Larsen, Donels argues, didn’t articulate how the government had met its burden of proof in concluding Dambreville posed a flight risk and threat to the public. She is now seeking sanctions against the federal government in the form of payment of Dambreville’s legal fees.
DOJ opposes a ‘monetary sanction on the judge’
The Department of Justice is fighting back, arguing that Donels is seeking to hold Homeland Security and ICE in contempt for the decision-making of an independent immigration judge.
“The immigration judge fully complied with this court’s order,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Peyton Gaumer argued in court papers filed Friday. “The immigration judge is not required to document in her written decision the burden of proof.”
Gaumer also suggested Donels’ contempt motion was aimed at Larsen, adding that Donels had cited “no authority in support of the remarkable proposition that a U.S. District Court may hold an immigration judge in contempt of court and impose a monetary sanction on the judge.”
If, Gaumer argued, Donels is seeking only to hold Homeland Security and ICE in contempt, she has failed to show how those agencies’ actions resulted in Larsen’s denial of bond for Dambreville.
Gaumer went on to argue that Dambreville is, as the judge ruled, a danger to the community and a flight risk. Dambreville, he told the court, “has only been in the United States a relatively short time, around two years. He is unemployed. He has no assets. He is not married and has no children.”
Judge once worked for ICE and Homeland Security
Prior to becoming an immigration judge in 2019, Larsen served as assistant chief counsel in the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor for ICE and Homeland Security, according to the TRAC, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research center affiliated with Syracuse University.
From 2011 to 2012, she served as deputy chief and chief of Office of the Principal Legal Advisor in the District Court Litigation Division of ICE and Homeland Security. Prior to that, she served an associate legal advisor for the ICE and Homeland Security.
According to data compiled by TRAC, Larsen has denied asylum in 89.6% of the cases that have come before her, while immigration judges nationally denied 58.9% of asylum claims over the same time period.
In 2024, the ACLU of Nebraska issued a report, Courting Disaster, detailing a list of concerns with immigration court practices in Omaha by Larsen and others.
The report cited the three-minute duration of many immigration court hearings, judges’ repeated failure to advise people of their rights, and the high number of cases handled without attorney representation.
Recently, the federal government’s firing of immigration judges, followed by the hiring of what it calls “deportation judges,” has come under fire, with some legal advocates suggesting the Trump administration is attempting to fill the positions based on political considerations.
The attorney for one Iowa detainee recently cited in court the federal government’s written solicitations for applicants to the position of “deportation judge.”
The solicitation states: “YOU BE THE JUDGE. Help write the next chapter of America… DEFINE AMERICA FOR GENERATIONS… Preside over cases in federal Immigration Court and determine whether an alien has to leave the United States or gets to stay. Make decisions with generational consequences… Restore integrity and honor to our Nation’s Immigration Court system.”
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