Steven Tendo, a refugee from Uganda seeking political asylum in the U.S., speaks with supporters after receiving a letter announcing a year-long stay of his deportation in St. Albans on Tuesday, November 15, 2022. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger Steven Tendo, a Ugandan minister and nursing assis tant who moved to Vermont in 2021 while seeking asylum, was detained in Shelburne on Wednesday morning by federal immigration agents, according to the union he’s a part of and the advocacy group Migrant Justice. Tendo was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside a health care facility where he works, said Will Lambek, an organizer with Migrant Justice, and Tendo’s union, UVMMC Support Staff United. It’s possible that agents from one or more other federal agencies were involved in Tendo’s detention as well, Lambek said. Tendo said in a phone call Wednesday that he was being held, at least for a time, at a facility in Manchester, New Hampshire, according to Lambek. READ MORE Tendo had a regularly scheduled check-in with ICE slated for Friday, Lambek and the union said. It was not immediately clear whether Tendo’s detention was related to the timing of that check-in. Tendo was detained “without crime being committed,” the union wrote in a social media post Wednesday.  Tendo fled his native country in 2018 and applied for asylum protection in the U.S. He fought his case in the immigration court system for years, though his application was ultimately denied, meaning federal officials could remove him from the country.  In Uganda, Tendo was brutally tortured and members of his family were killed because government forces there viewed an advocacy organization he founded as a political threat, according to U.S. federal court records and Tendo’s own past accounts.  He has described being returned to Uganda as “a death sentence.” Tendo’s plight has drawn support in recent years from international human rights groups and dozens of members of Congress. Tendo was nearly deported while in ICE custody in Texas in 2020, though the agency granted him a reprieve amid pressure from advocates and members of Congress, later releasing him in early 2021 on a condition called humanitarian parole. He faced possible deportation again in 2022 after moving to Vermont, but agency leaders granted a request by his lawyers to hold off on deporting him for at least another year.  About 50 people gathered at a rally supporting Tendo outside ICE’s field office in St. Albans Wednesday morning, according to Lambek. This story will be updated. Read the story on VTDigger here: Ugandan asylum seeker Steven Tendo detained by ICE. ...read more read less