One longtime Vermont resident won at least temporary freedom Wednesday and another was freshly detained as hundreds of people took to the streets of Burlington to protest a dramatic increase in immigration enforcement since last January.
Hussien Noor Hussien, a cab driver who’s lived in Vermont since 2013, emerged from the federal courthouse in Burlington to thundering cheers after U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered his release.
Hussien, surrounded by ecstatic family members, thanked the crowd for their demonstrations of support in the weeks since he was incarcerated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on New Year’s Day.
“I don’t have words for it, but all I know is Vermont is my home,” he said through a family friend who interpreted. “I’m not going nowhere from it, and I can’t thank you enough. … You showed me some respect, and I owe that respect back to you all.”
Hussien’s moment of triumph came shortly after noon Wednesday. About four hours prior, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained another well-known immigrant Vermonter whose case has already triggered preparations for future rallies.
Steven Tendo, an asylum-seeker from Uganda who moved to the state in 2021, was taken into custody in Colchester by agents executing a final order of removal, according to an attorney familiar with the case.
After celebrating Hussein’s release, Will Lambek, with the immigrant-rights organization Migrant Justice, said Tendo’s detention was a reminder of a “larger reality.”
“Which is that ICE and Border Patrol continue to escalate their attacks on immigrant families in this state and the sad reality that most people who are detained are going to be deported,” Lambek said.
'Certain death if I were to return home'
Tendo, of Colchester, is a licensed nursing assistant at University of Vermont Medical Center who, according to colleagues, is currently pursuing his nursing degree. He sought asylum in the United States in 2018 after he says he was imprisoned and tortured by Ugandan authorities for his efforts to teach young people about their political rights.
“The missing fingers on my left hand are a constant reminder of this brutality,” Tendo wrote in his bio on the UVMMC website.
He said he noted in his asylum petition that he would face “certain death if I were to return home.”
The federal government denied Tendo’s asylum case in 2019, but his quest to win permanent legal status gained momentum in 2020 after 40 members of Congress, including then-Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont, urged the Department of Homeland Security to grant his appeal.
He’d been allowed to remain in the country pending the outcome of his asylum case, so long as he attended regularly scheduled check-ins with ICE. His next visit was supposed to be Friday. Melissa Battah, executive director of Vermont Interfaith Action, was among the people who’d planned to accompany him to the appointment.
“We had a lineup of clergy and faith leaders that were going to speak, and then we were just going to have a prayerful witness as he went in for his check-in and came out,” Battah said. “Then ICE decided to terrorize and raid his space today.”
Battah and other faith leaders said Wednesday that Tendo is a pastor who’s established a ministry for other immigrants seeking asylum.
“He has always been able to use his presence in our community to deepen and enrich our community and support those most vulnerable,” said Rev. Karen G. Johnston, senior minister at First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington. “He has been so courageous and brave.”
Brett Stokes is the director of the Center for Justice Reform Clinic at Vermont Law School, which was working on a petition to release Tendo Wednesday. Stokes said Wednesday afternoon that Tendo has been transferred to New Hampshire and believed ICE would later be taking him to Massachusetts.
“We are working really fast to try to get this thing filed,” Stokes said.
Jacob Berkowitz, president of UVMMC Support Staff United, the union in which Tendo is a member, said colleagues are “distraught.”
“It’s what he does outside the hospital that I think really makes him unique,” Berkowitz said, referring to Tendo’s work with vulnerable new arrivals to Vermont. “He helps them get on their feet with whatever little resources he has. … If there’s anyone who deserves to be in this country, it’s someone like Steven.”
UVMMC issued a written statement Wednesday condemning Tendo’s detention specifically, and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown broadly.
“It is … an example of how the current actions of ICE are causing real harm in our communities and our health care system,” a spokesperson said. “We stand with Steven’s family, colleagues and friends in calling for his immediate release and return home.”
'A pillar of the community'
Hussien Noor Hussien fled Somalia as a refugee and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2011. That citizenship was revoked, according to court records, after he was convicted in Maine of three immigration-related crimes, including impersonating someone else to illegally obtain naturalization.
Hussien, who lives in Burlington with his wife and five children, is now pursuing asylum. He was arrested by ICE agents while working in Burlington last month. His detention came in the days after President Donald Trump ramped up attacks on Somalis, and about a week before the Department of Homeland Security announced that it’s terminating Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from the country.
Hussien’s niece, Hibo Jafar, said Wednesday that her uncle’s detention has put enormous strain on the family.
“He’s a great father. He’s a great husband. He does a lot for his family,” she said. “I’ve known him since I was a child and I love him so much and I hope this can be over with and he can be free and back with his family.”
Stokes, who represents Hussien, said the judge who ordered his release on bail Wednesday cited the more than 40 letters of support the court had received from community members.
Stokes said the judge read one aloud from the bench, from an eighth grade boy who plays soccer with Hussien’s son.
“I think it just goes to show what kind of person he is,” Stokes said. “I wish that I could say that in every case where someone is a pillar of the community that they’re going to get the same outcome. It’s more complicated than that.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to a media inquiry Wednesday. Between Jan. 20 and Dec. 2 of 2025, according to agency data reviewed by Vermont Public, ICE conducted 9,987 removals in the “area of operation” that consists of Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.
That figure is 1000% higher than the number of ICE-facilitated deportations during the same time period in 2024.
Maryan Maalin, another niece of Hussien’s, said she hopes her uncle won’t become one of those statistics in 2026.
“I love Vermont,” she said. “It’s not the soil. It’s the people that make it what it is.”
Abagael Giles contributed reporting.
