Berhanu Kibret flew to Texas to accept a national teaching award. He flew home in ICE custody. The University of Maryland pharmacy instructor, fresh off winning teacher of the year honors from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, was detained by federal immigration agents at Dallas-Fort Worth airport before he could make it back to Baltimore.
What Actually Happened at That Airport
According to multiple news reports confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security, ICE agents arrested Kibret as he was returning from the pharmacy educators' conference where he had just been recognized as the best in his field. The University of Maryland told CBS that Kibret holds valid work authorization, which makes the timing of this arrest feel less like immigration enforcement and more like a particularly cruel prank.
DHS says the problem is a visa that expired on May 31, 2024 — Kibret originally entered the US on June 21, 2021 on that visa. 'Against our nation's laws, he overstayed his visa and failed to depart,' the agency said in a statement to The Guardian. ICE is holding him pending immigration proceedings.
The university, for its part, is not playing ball with that framing. The school called Kibret 'a highly valued member of the University of Maryland, Baltimore community' and said it was 'greatly troubled' by his arrest. 'He is an effective and beloved teacher, and a highly regarded colleague,' the university said. 'His detention has generated not only great sympathy for his plight, but also a heightened sense of apprehension here on campus.'
Who Berhanu Kibret Actually Is
Kibret is not some mysterious figure whose background is impossible to check. His work is published. His credentials are listed on the university's own website. He earned a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, and a PhD in Ethiopia, then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at William Paterson University in New Jersey.
His research focuses on how the brain's cannabinoid system influences mental health, brain disease, and addiction. That is the kind of work that does not happen overnight and does not get replaced easily. You don't just post a job listing and find someone doing cutting-edge neuropharmacology research the following Tuesday.
And yet here we are. A man the University of Maryland called 'beloved' is sitting in federal detention after being scooped up at an airport on what should have been one of the best days of his professional life.
This Is Becoming a Pattern in the Mid-Atlantic
Kibret's arrest is not an isolated incident. Last month, as The Guardian reports, ICE detained Fatima Ameaka at Baltimore/Washington International Airport. Ameaka holds a doctorate in pharmacy and works at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a Cameroonian citizen, and according to documents reviewed by ABC, she had a work authorization valid through 2029 and a pending asylum case.
DHS initially told the public that Ameaka had 'overstayed her visa' and would remain in custody 'pending removal proceedings.' Johns Hopkins called her a 'respected member of our community' and said the university was 'actively working to provide support.' Ameaka was eventually released, her attorney confirmed. So the government detained a woman with valid work papers and an open asylum case, held her long enough to terrify her colleagues and her institution, then let her go.
Two major research universities. Two pharmacy experts. Two airport arrests within weeks of each other. If the Trump administration is building a case that this is coincidence, it is a tough sell.
The 'Worst of the Worst' Promise, Revisited
The Trump administration has been consistent on one talking point: ICE is going after the 'worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.' That is the phrase. They have used it repeatedly.
A Guardian analysis published in February found that 77 percent of people placed into deportation proceedings for the first time after Trump returned to the White House in 2025 had no criminal convictions. Seventy-seven percent. Not a rounding error. Not a statistical blip. Three quarters of the people being fed into the deportation machine had no criminal record at all.
Berhanu Kibret, award-winning pharmacy educator and brain disease researcher, fits comfortably in that 77 percent. So does Fatima Ameaka. So, presumably, do thousands of other people who are not making national news because they do not have a major research university going to bat for them publicly.
What the Universities Are Doing About It
The University of Maryland's statement was notably direct for an academic institution, which tends to communicate in the careful, hedged language of people who have too many lawyers on retainer. The school said it was 'greatly troubled.' It said detention had created 'a heightened sense of apprehension' on campus. It said it hopes Kibret will be 'permitted to continue his work.' That last part is doing a lot of work as a sentence.
Johns Hopkins, in Ameaka's case, went a step further and publicly addressed the fear spreading through its community. 'The university understands the fear and concern this instills in members of our community,' a spokesperson told several outlets during her detention. That is an institution acknowledging, out loud, that its researchers are scared to fly home from conferences.
Think about what it means for American research universities if their international faculty cannot travel to professional conferences without calculating the odds that they will be detained at the airport on the way back. That is not a hypothetical problem. That is the situation right now.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe the federal government is using its vast deportation apparatus to protect Americans from dangerous criminals. ICE has the resources, the personnel, and the political backing to go after whoever it wants. And what it keeps choosing to go after, again and again, is researchers at major universities who are traveling between academic conferences.
This is either staggering incompetence or it is intentional. ICE agents do not accidentally end up at Baltimore/Washington International and Dallas-Fort Worth. Someone made a list. Someone decided that pharmacy professors with valid work authorizations were a higher priority than whatever else was on the docket that week. The 'worst of the worst' framing was always dishonest, but at this point it is not even pretending to hold together.
Kibret is sitting in detention while his university calls him beloved and the country that detained him touts his arrest as a law enforcement success. He won teacher of the year and came home in handcuffs. If that image does not capture exactly what this administration's immigration policy actually looks like in practice, stripped of the rhetoric about criminals and borders, then nothing will.
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