Kentucky State forward Aminata Seck taken into ICE custody at Louisville airport
Aminata Seck, a Senegalese Division II Kentucky State women’s basketball player, was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport on 7 August while travelling to the HBCU All‑Star game in New York. The detention and subsequent reports about her treatment and immigration status emerged this week.
Seck is listed as a Kentucky State senior who last season started 20 of 26 games, earned third‑team all‑conference honours and received an SIAC Elite 16 award for academic achievement. According to lawyer Sadiqa Reynolds, Seck has been moved through four different ICE facilities: Clay County, Chicago, Clark County and Grayson County. Reynolds said the reason for Seck’s imprisonment was a missed student visa deadline, what she characterised as "a paperwork situation", caused by back surgery, and that Seck has been suffering from an ACL injury while detained and has received only ibuprofen but no proper medical care.
The Department of Homeland Security told USA Today on 23 September that Seck "chose to overstay her welcome in violation of our nation’s laws", adding, "To be clear: a pending application or work authorization does not confer legal status in the United States." DHS also said an immigration judge issued a final order of removal for Seck on 8 September 2025 after she purportedly "failed to show up for her immigration hearing" and stressed that "she will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings."
Margaret Fleming of Front Office Sports reported that a DHS spokesperson told her: "Upon entrance examination, medical personnel noted Seck was wearing a leg brace to support a knee injury that occurred prior to detention. On 21 September, she was referred to the local hospital, where she is receiving treatment for knee pain." Fleming also reported DHS’s comment that it is "longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody." Hishem Alsalman, Seck’s lawyer in her federal habeas corpus petition, told Fleming that Seck "never received notice of the hearing that resulted" in her removal order and that "far from knowingly ignoring her immigration obligations, she was actively taking steps to ensure that her student status remained intact while continuing her education at Kentucky State University." Alsalman also told Fleming that Seck has experienced seizures during her time in detention and was in hospital as of 23 September.
Reynolds reported that Seck has been receiving considerable support from Kentucky State coach Amani Williams, saying that "she has treated her like a mother would treat their child." The article argues that while Williams’s response has been substantial, institutions that recruit international athletes should create systems to support those athletes when their immigration status becomes precarious rather than leaving that responsibility to individual coaches.
The reporting places Seck’s case in a broader enforcement and political context: ICE arrests in Kentucky have risen by 70% this year, and the White House has, the article says, more than doubled the ICE complement, claims to have deported some 605,000 people, and operates with the goal of deporting one million people per year. The piece also notes recent higher‑profile campus controversies, including a Department of Education X post showing white fans at the University of Texas under the banner "Make College Football Great Again" in reference to viral images of South Asian fans at a Texas game, and legislation introduced by Ohio Senator Jon Husted on 14 September calling for a cap on international college athletes at no more than 20% per team on the grounds that "foreign interference" is stealing opportunities from American student‑athletes.
The article highlights the financial and structural dynamics that shape the recruitment and vulnerability of international college athletes (ICAs), calling them a "cash cow" for universities through tuition, fees and housing revenue and noting that scholarship rules in Division II mean, for example, "a school can only award a maximum total of 10 women’s basketball scholarships, divided as they please." It also says ICAs face restrictions on their ability to benefit from NIL opportunities on US land and that they encounter discrimination, language barriers, financial struggles, lack of belonging, culture shock, homesickness and "heightened rates of depression and anxiety." The piece adds that ICAs serve as brand ambassadors for institutions in their home countries, creating incentives for predatory recruitment.
The authors report there are over 25,000 ICAs across the NCAA, making up almost 13% of the entire college athlete population; in 2025 there were 713 international women’s basketball players across all divisions, the sixth most of any women’s sport, and 144 of those were in Division II. They note these numbers have risen since 2012, when the totals were 294 across divisions and 85 at the Division II level. The article cites Simran Kaur Sethi’s ongoing research suggesting international athletes are being actively recruited to programs at multiple levels, including lower divisions, Juco and NAIA institutions, often in parts of the country that are harder for coaches to recruit domestic athletes to, and that many ICAs make college decisions based primarily on athletic opportunity, scholarship availability, program ranking and relationships with coaches with little knowledge of local communities and political environments.
Nandita Sharma told the authors, "Both the NCAA and Kentucky State University have benefited from the excellence of Aminata Seck in both her studies and her athleticism. Yet, in her moment of need, they seem to have abandoned her. Instead of helping with the administrative work to renew her student visa, the NCAA and KSU put the onus entirely on her, even as the back surgery she needed from playing basketball kept her from doing so on time. Now, as Seck disappears into the ICE detention system, they remain silent. Athletes like Seck are recruited by US universities because they provide athletic, reputational and financial value to these institutions. Yet when the same athletes become vulnerable because of the immigration system that governs their ability to study, compete, work and remain in the United States, institutional responsibility cannot simply disappear. Universities cannot celebrate ICAs when they score points, win championships, pay tuition dollars and expand institutional brands abroad, only to treat their immigration precarity as an individual problem when policy changes negatively impact them. If institutions are going to recruit globally, they must also take responsibility globally – developing the legal expertise, immigration support, emergency protocols and institutional protections necessary to support the ICAs they actively bring to the United States. The NCAA and its member institutions cannot have it both ways; they cannot benefit from the globalization of college sport while at the same time abandoning the athletes who make that globalization possible to navigate an increasingly precarious immigration landscape on their own. Seck’s case must thus force the world of US college sport to confront a much larger question: what does an institution owe an ICA after convincing them to cross a border, enroll, pay, compete, and represent its name? If the answer is protection only when it is convenient, then the promise being sold to ICAs during recruitment is very different from the reality awaiting them once they arrive on USS land.
As Sharma put it: "The millions of dollars of resources that international students and athletes bring to the NCAA and to universities must be spent on ensuring the safety and status of student athletes." Nathan Kalman‑Lamb is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick and co‑host of The End of Sport podcast; Simran Kaur Sethi is Assistant Professor of Sport Leadership at the University of Kentucky where she studies equity and inclusion for international college athletes; Derek Silva is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at King’s University College at Western University and co‑host of The End of Sport podcast.