At risk

Steven Tendo holds a document allowing him to stay in the US for another six months. Beside him is his lawyer, Brett Stokes, director of the Center for Justice Reform Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School. Below, among those supporting Tendo are members of the union at the University of Vermont Medical Center, where Tendo is working and training to be a nurse.

Ugandan authorities imprisoned human rights activist Steven Tendo and subjected him to unspeakable torture. In December 2018, he fled to the United States seeking political asylum, only to be detained again—this time for six months by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). There, among other abuses, he was restrained with the WRAP, a device that bound his legs and forced his head toward his knees, causing excruciating pain and difficulty breathing. He spent more than two years in ICE custody at Port Isabel, Texas.

Tendo now lives in Vermont, where he is studying nursing and is a pastor. In June 2019, a judge denied his asylum claim. In November 2020, however, he received a stay on his deportation that was expected to extend for six months to a year.

Imagine, then, what was going through his head when, only two months after his November stay, he was ordered to report to ICE headquarters in St. Albans, Vermont, for another hearing on his asylum status. One day after Trump’s inauguration.

With nearly 100 supporters gathered in single-digit temperatures, Tendo walked into ICE headquarters, aware that a judge could order his immediate transfer him to a detention facility and his return to possible death in Uganda.

In fact, smiling broadly, he exited ICE after an hour, saying the order to report in was a bureaucratic mistake, and Tendo has another six months until his follow-up hearing.

And that is what, in this country, now passes for good news.