On August 7, Aminata Seck was supposed to be on a flight to New York with her Kentucky State University basketball teammates. Instead, federal immigration brokers took her into custody at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. More than seven weeks later, the 26-year-old student-athlete, initially from Dakar, Senegal, is preventing an immigration case while her attorneys raise issues about her health.
Seck, recognized as Amina on the Thorobreds’ roster, is more than a title in a detention file. The 6-foot-4 heart led Kentucky State’s girls’s basketball crew with 11.7 factors and 7.3 rebounds per sport during the 2025–26 season. She earned third-team All-SIAC honors and the convention’s Elite 16 award, its highest tutorial recognition for a student-athlete. She was touring to a New York basketball occasion with her crew when she was detained, according to attorney Sadiqa Reynolds.
The Department of Homeland Security says Seck legally entered the United States in September 2019 but remained after her approved period of keep expired. The company says an immigration choose ordered her elimination on September 8, 2025, after she failed to seem at a listening to. Reynolds has said Seck may have missed a deadline linked to her pupil visa while recovering from back surgical procedure.
Her legal crew disputes the suggestion that she knowingly ignored an immigration listening to. Attorney Hishem Alsalman advised Front Office Sports that Seck says she never obtained discover of the listening to or the elimination order. He said her attorneys filed a movement in immigration court on August 18 to reopen the case. That dispute stays unresolved; a missed listening to and an attorney’s account of lacking discover are both central to what occurs next.
Seck’s present bodily situation has added some urgency to the scenario. Reynolds says the athlete has an ACL damage and has been in vital ache while in custody. According to Alsalman, she was moved among 4 detention amenities, skilled seizures and was hospitalized. DHS says Seck was carrying a leg brace when detained and was referred to a hospital for knee ache on September 21. The company maintains that people in its custody have access to medical care. The accounts differ on whether Seck obtained enough care before that hospital go to.
On September 24, Seck filed a federal petition difficult her detention and in search of emergency reduction. A choose set deadlines for the authorities to reply; the public docket reveals a response filed September 28 and a deadline for Seck’s reply on September 30. The submitting is just one step in her case, not a ruling ordering her release. DHS has said she will stay in ICE custody while elimination proceedings proceed.
Kentucky State officers have declined to focus on the case, citing privateness issues. Rep. Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky has said his workplace is monitoring the scenario. As the legal combat unfolds, the query is no longer only how an completed student-athlete ended up in detention on a crew journey day. It is whether she can get the care she wants and a honest probability to contest the order that put her there.
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