In my days before becoming an immigration attorney, I was a journalism student and sportswriter. Blessed to cover the UNC Lady Tar Heels women’s basketball team over a three-year period, I was courtside to see some incredible players, including future Olympian Marion Jones, the school’s starting point guard in its national championship run. This included a feature I wrote about a foreign player on the roster, Maja Vukojicic, who was originally from Yugoslavia (now Serbia). Her story was remarkable, and although she did not ever become an impact player for the team, she got to live her unique version of the American Dream, play hoops in the U.S., get an education, and eventually became a dentist.

Thirty years after I wrote that article, most elite programs have international players, and the growth in the women’s game on an international level has caused a spike in the flow of student-athletes from abroad. This has penetrated all levels of college women’s hoops, with an international presence growing across the country. In 2009-10, there were 262 international women on Division I basketball rosters. By 2024-25 there were 950, more than three and a half times as many. The growth has not slowed. One analysis of University of Maryland roster data puts international players at about 20% of all Division I women’s players this season, up from 15% in 2021-22. Roughly one in every five players you watch on a Division I court learned the game somewhere else.

For those who don’t appreciate women’s hoops like I do, this reality may not have been on their radar at all, until the story of Aminata (“Amina”) Seck came into the news.

A suitcase, a scholarship, and a plan

Picture the flight. An international teenager leaves home with a suitcase, a scholarship offer, and a simple plan: earn an American degree and play the game she loves at a level her hometown gym could never offer — a student-athlete’s American Dream. What the dream does not advertise is the fine print. Every one of those players is here with a permission that has to be maintained, with forms, deadlines, and signatures properly and timely filed. Most of the time it all runs quietly in the background. When it does not, the consequences can be brutal, as in the case of Amina Seck.

Amina Seck

Seck is one of those approximately 950 international women’s basketball players playing high level college hoops in the U.S. on scholarship. She is from Dakar, Senegal, a 6’4″ interior player, who was beginning her senior year of school at Kentucky State University, after All-SIAC Third Team selection last year, until that is, she was apprehended by ICE Federal officials at a Kentucky airport in August. She has been in detention ever since. Why?

Someone dropped the ball.

On August 7, 2026, Amina was headed to New York with her teammates. She never made it past Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport, where immigration agents took her into custody. No criminal charge has been reported. Her attorney, Sadiqa Reynolds, put it simply: “This woman is not a criminal. She hasn’t done anything wrong.” That is not Homeland Security’s point of view. From my point of view, there was negligence by one or multiple parties along the way that caused this to happen.

Explanations are few and far between. The comments from her current attorney are vague about whether a deadline for filing an extension of her status was late. Given the chain of events, she must have fallen out of status because she was then sent a notice to appear (NTA) to defend herself in a deportation hearing. There is also no explanation for why she missed that hearing, why she may not have had any representation for it, or why she may have never known it happened at all.

On September 8, 2025, an immigration judge signed a final order of removal after Amina failed to appear at a scheduled hearing. Eleven months later she was still in the U.S., and now she is in ICE detention.

Immigration court works differently from what most people imagine. If you do not show up and you cannot prove that you were not properly notified, the judge is generally required to order you removed, often without ever hearing your side (“in absentia”). There are narrow ways to undo that, such as proving you never received notice or that something exceptional, like a serious illness, kept you away. Those doors have deadlines, and they close.

Consider how student immigration works. A visa is just the stamp that gets you through the door. Your permission to stay is a separate thing, and it lives or dies on paperwork: enrollment reports, program end dates, extensions, and forms that have to be filed on time by you, your school, or both. Miss one step, and a student who has done nothing dishonest can slide out of legal status without ever feeling the floor move.

The federal government has no sympathy for that slide. The Department of Homeland Security says Seck “overstay[ed] her welcome in violation of our country’s laws,” and adds that pending applications do not give anyone legal status. What is not public is who was responsible for the missed deadline that triggered the deportation nor why she was not present at her deportation hearing. Kentucky State University has declined to comment, saying that “out of respect for the privacy of those involved” it has no information to share. So the record does not yet show whether the school’s international student office, Seck, or both missed a step.

Six weeks behind bars suffering, with deportation pending

Since that August morning, Amina has been moved between four detention facilities across Kentucky and Illinois and now sits in the Grayson County Detention Center in Leitchfield. She is recovering from back surgery and was wearing a knee brace when she was detained. Her attorney says she needs surgery for a knee injury and has received limited medical attention.

On September 21 she was taken to a hospital for knee pain. Reynolds says that there, “she cannot have phone calls, she cannot have visitors.” Her coach, Amani Williams, has reportedly pushed for her release, supporters have rallied for her, and DHS says she will stay in custody pending removal.

The lesson hiding in the fine print

Whatever the full facts turn out to be, Amina’s story shows how little room the system leaves for a missed step. A late form or a skipped hearing can, within months, turn an international student in good standing into someone facing removal. Each stage narrows the options, and by the time a person is in detention, the fixes that were easy early on can be far harder to win.

The cruel part is that this kind of trouble is often preventable. If you are an international student, or know one, here is what I would want you to know:


• Treat every date like a deadline, because it is one. Not filing an extension of status has no remedy. Missing an immigration court hearing can lead to a removal order in your absence.
• Do not lean on the school alone. International student offices help with student status, but they are not your lawyer and cannot represent you in court. Always watch your own back.
• Keep your address current with the government and your school, and open every piece of mail.
• Hire a qualified immigration attorney early, not after the problem has grown. Surgery, illness, and moves are exactly when paperwork slips, so tell your attorney and ask what falls due while you recover.
• Confirm who is actually representing you. Ask whether an attorney has formally entered an appearance in your case, and keep copies of everything.

Amina Seck did what thousands of young women do every year: she crossed an ocean to chase a degree and a game. She deserves a fair fight for the life she came here to build. The rest of us should learn from how easily that life was put at risk by negligence. Now her chance to hit the last shot to win the big game may never come.