[The latest: ICE releases Johns Hopkins researcher detained while boarding flight]
Fatima Ameaka, a Johns Hopkins University public health researcher and former Fulbright scholar, remained in federal custody Friday after her apprehension by immigration officials this week sparked fear and concern on the Baltimore campus.
Her arrest, which came as a shock to her colleagues, appears to be part of a larger national campaign targeting immigrants at airports. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been working with the Transportation Security Administration to arrest people with expired visas or with outstanding deportation orders, according to recent national media reports.
On July 28, federal immigration enforcement agents arrested Ameaka, who is from Cameroon, at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport for allegedly overstaying a visa that homeland security officials said expired in 2024.
She was detained despite a pending asylum application, according to her immigration attorney Benjamin Osorio.
He said he had paperwork detailing Ameaka’s immigration history but a scheduled video interview between the lawyer and his client had been canceled because she was being transferred.
After her arrest, Ameaka was sent to a facility near Fredericksburg, Virginia, before being transferred to Louisiana. On Friday, the agency said it plans to move her again, to Harlingen, Texas, Osorio said.
After entering the country on a visa, Ameaka was granted temporary protected status, which the Biden administration extended to Cameroonians due to an armed conflict and resulting humanitarian crisis, Osorio said.
Ameaka applied for asylum, her lawyer said, and her case has been pending before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Now, instead of waiting to be called for an interview with an asylum officer, she’ll have to defend her case before an immigration judge, Osorio said.
Ameaka entered the country on June 27, 2023, on a visa that allowed her to remain until June 13, 2024, but she overstayed, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, has worked with Ameaka for two years. He said she left messages right after she was detained and before she was moved several times.
“Everybody is very worried about her,” he said in an interview Friday.
Inglesby described Ameaka as a “wonderful colleague, who is funny, warm and very smart.”
“The feeling here is collective shock,” he said. “There is the deepest level of concern for her safety and her health and her whereabouts. ... Across Hopkins there has been a groundswell of support for her.”
A GoFundMe, organized by someone who said they were Ameaka’s colleague at Hopkins, raised more than $40,000 over two days to help with her legal fees.
In a statement Thursday, Hopkins spokesperson Doug Donovan wrote that, though the university cannot comment on specifics, it is “actively working to provide support for Dr. Ameaka, including ensuring she has access to legal representation.”
Under a data-sharing partnership between the TSA and ICE, immigration officers can access passenger information for “aviation security,” according to a memorandum of agreement signed in May 2025. Members of Congress sent a letter to major airline executives, asking them to stop selling travel records to U.S. government agencies due to privacy concerns.
A DHS spokesperson said the department is using the data-sharing partnership to identify people traveling in the country. The goal is to ensure immigrants without legal permission to stay in the country can no longer fly unless they are traveling to return permanently to their home country, according to the spokesperson.
A broader strategy of targeting expired visas at airports could also been seen as a conflict with the Trump administration’s original goal of the mass deportation campaign. The effort, officials said, would target violent criminals, whom the president called “the worst of the worst.”
At BWI, local officials do not direct or participate in federal immigration enforcement, which operates under its own legal authority, according to Shane Goad, an airport spokesperson. There is no BWI policy that requires federal agencies to communicate with airports before officials make an arrest.
Ameaka’s social media pages show she began studying for a master’s degree in public health in 2023 as a Fulbright scholar and is the founder of BodyTalk, an organization that aims to educate young women and girls about self-esteem, health and body positivity.
She’s affiliated with the university’s environmental health and engineering department and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, according to the university’s website.
Ameaka’s research has examined how to tackle foodborne illness and infectious disease and how long the measles virus can remain transmissible after exposure. Both topics have been in the news as the U.S. experiences outbreaks of cyclosporiasis and measles.
In online posts, Ameaka has described herself as a Christian woman who comes from a large family in Cameroon. She has said she is a poet, writer and pharmacist.
Two years ago, she read one of her poems to an audience at the public health school.
“I am nothing like what they say I am,” she said in a video posted on LinkedIn. “I want to scream, but will anyone listen? My voice seems too small to carry across the oceans.”
Have information about immigrants recently arrested at airports in the region? We’d like to hear from you. Please email alissa.zhu@thebaltimorebanner.com
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