ICE’s detention of Baltimore academics roils Maryland universities

The recent immigration arrests of two Baltimore academics are roiling their Maryland universities that are already buffeted by new visa restrictions that affect thousands of international faculty, researchers and students.

Last month, a University of Maryland School of Pharmacy instructor from Ethiopia was detained by federal agents at a Texas airport despite his attorney’s insistence that he was working in the country lawfully.

Berhanu Kibret, who was returning to Baltimore after attending a conference in Texas where he was named “teacher of the year,” has now been in federal custody for two weeks at a privately run immigration detention facility in Oklahoma, his attorney said in an interview Tuesday.

Separately, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Fatima Ameaka, a Johns Hopkins University researcher originally from Cameroon, at Baltimore’s airport before releasing her two days later.

Their arrests and detentions happened amid a series of sweeping changes by the Trump administration that are impacting higher education and hundreds of thousands of international students. Last spring, the federal government revoked visas for students at Hopkins, the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

And a new restriction imposed by the Trump administration last month will further iaffect college campuses.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security imposed a strict four-year time limit on student visas to restrict how international students transfer schools and change their majors. The changes will likely heavily impact both Hopkins and UMB, where the majority of attendees are graduate students. The policy change goes into effect in mid-September.

Though Border Patrol has a regular presence at airports that serve as international checkpoints, the regular presence of ICE officers, who conduct domestic enforcement in the U.S. interior, is new, according to former DHS officials. Targeted ICE operations at airports used to be exceedingly rare, reserved for cases involving terrorism or national security threats and those who officials feared could be fleeing justice.

Kibret was arrested July 21 at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, and is being held at the Diamondback Correctional Facility, about 70 miles northwest of Oklahoma City, according to a DHS statement issued Monday. Federal officials said he was arrested for overstaying a visa that expired in May 2024.

But his attorney, Ronia Dubbaneh, said in an interview Tuesday that Kibret has valid work authorization after applying to secure other legal immigration status with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. She declined to say what relief Kibret is seeking to stay in the country.

She added that her client should be allowed to remain in the country while that application is pending.

Her team is “doing everything we can to get him released,” Dubbaneh said.

“Dr. Kibret is very well loved, well respected, and highly esteemed,” she said. “We have heard from so many of his colleagues at the University of Maryland who are outraged by this.”

ICE officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday about Kibret’s detention and future court appearances.

Miriam Feldblum, head of a national association of college and university officials, called the new restrictions on foreign nationals deeply distressing and said they appear to flout existing regulations and procedures.

In a statement, she wrote that her organization, the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, remains committed to supporting international students and other campus members, including through litigation.

Immigration-related arrests at airports — the latest tactic in President Donald Trump’s expanding deportation campaign — have been ramping up across the country, including around Baltimore and Washington, D.C., after ICE and the Transportation Security Administration began a controversial data-sharing agreement.

Kelly Rojas, an attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said there was a concerning lack of discretion for those who have already proven they are on a clear path toward more permanent legal status, and even full citizenship.

Without that acknowledgment, experts say, there now could be thousands more people at risk of deportation. People who entered through family reunification or now-canceled parole programs could also be at higher risk of arrest, according to the National Immigration Law Center.

A week after Kibret was detained, Ameaka, the Hopkins researcher, was arrested by immigration agents while boarding a domestic flight out of Baltimore. The reason federal authorities gave for Ameaka’s detention was also for overstaying a visa. Ameaka was released from a detention facility in Texas on Friday night, her attorney said, and will now have to fight her pending asylum claim before an immigration judge.

“Johns Hopkins is pleased to have been able to support efforts toward the release of our valued colleague,” Hopkins spokesperson Doug Donovan wrote in a statement this week. “We are deeply appreciative of the overwhelming care and support shown by the university community and many others, and while we cannot comment on the specifics of her ongoing case, we continue to support Dr. Ameaka.”

Attorneys for both Ameaka and Kibret say their clients have valid, unexpired work permits issued by DHS, which are permitted for some immigrants applying for more formal legal status to remain while they wait for a decision on their application.

But some details about Kibret’s case remain a mystery, even to his own attorney.

Dubbaneh said she has tried contacting ICE officials in Oklahoma multiple times to ascertain the charges against her client but has not received them. She added that Kibret also has not received any paperwork describing why ICE officials believe he should be deported and have not scheduled him for a hearing to appear before an immigration judge.

Kibret has worked at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, since 2023 as an active facility member, according to his LinkedIn profile and online university records. A university spokesperson did not respond to requests on Tuesday for additional comment.

Before that, he was a postdoctoral research fellow and adjunct professor at William Paterson University. He had received advanced degrees in pharmacology from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.

His research has focused on the causes and treatment of drug addiction, including in the field of cannabinoid receptors.

In February, Kibret served as a judge for a competition held by the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy that featured student projects on phasing out animal testing in drug development, combating potentially misleading information about GLP-1s on social media and modernizing oversight of pharmaceuticals.

This coming academic year, he’s scheduled to teach an online course in the fall and in the spring terms on the legal framework for drug regulation and drug chemistry.