U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has transferred Fatima Ameaka, a public health researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, to a detention facility in Louisiana, according to a government website that tracks those detained by ICE.

Agents from federal agency arrested Ameaka, who is originally from Cameroon, for allegedly overstaying a visa on July 28 at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.

As of Friday morning, she was being held in the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, located roughly 90 miles outside of Baton Rouge.

The Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center has accused the female-only detention facility owned by The Geo Group Inc., which is a private prison company, of housing people in poor conditions and denying them medical care and adequate food.

Advertise with us

Hopkins is “deeply concerned” about Ameaka’s detention, university spokesperson Doug Donovan wrote in a statement on Thursday.

“The university understands the fear and concern this instills in members of our community,” Donovan wrote. “Dr. Ameaka was traveling in a personal capacity, and though we cannot comment on the specifics of her situation, we want to assure our community that the university is actively working to provide support for Dr. Ameaka, including ensuring she has access to legal representation.”

Ameaka began studying for a master’s degree in public health in 2023 as a Fulbright scholar, according to her LinkedIn page. She’s affiliated with the university’s environmental health and engineering department and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, according to her faculty page on the university’s website.

She’s also the founder of a peer education organization, BodyTalk, which aims to educate young women and girls about self-esteem, health and body positivity.

ICE has been working with the Transportation Security Administration since December to arrest immigrants with outstanding deportation orders at airports, according to The New York Times, and has expanded that cooperation to target those with expired visas.