Man facing ICE deportation to the Congo: "I feel like a person who has no value"

Politics South American man facing ICE deportation to the Congo says he feels "like a person who has no value" By Julia Ingram Julia Ingram Data Journalist Julia Ingram is a data journalist for CBS News Confirmed. She uses data analysis and computation to cover misinformation, AI and social media. Read Full Bio Julia Ingram May 1, 2026 / 11:56 AM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google When Jose Yugar-Cruz arrived at the Arizona-Mexico border in the July heat nearly two years ago, he told a federal court, he immediately turned himself into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and asked for asylum. In January 2025, though he was denied asylum, he became one of about 4,000 migrants last year to be granted a court order preventing their deportation to their home country because a judge found it more likely than not that they would face torture or persecution if returned, immigration court data shows.But the supposed victory was followed by a yearlong legal battle during which he remained detained. On Monday, a federal judge cleared the way for ICE to deport Yugar-Cruz to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. "I feel truly, truly devastated by what is happening to me," Yugar-Cruz, 37, told CBS News from ICE detention in Iowa, speaking in Spanish. "It is a country I don't know, I have no family there, I don't speak their language — as far as I understand I think it's French. I don't know what the process will be like there, I don't know if I'll continue to be detained.""I keep thinking it's a nightmare that I will wake up from," he added. Yugar-Cruz spoke in a joint interview with CBS News and The Minneapolis Star Tribune.A withholding of removal order like the one Yugar-Cruz received doesn't create a pathway to legal residence in the United States and allows for third-country deportations. But under previous administrations, the difficulty of deporting migrants to countries they aren't from meant that most who were granted such protections would end...