Pastor Steven Tendo, a Pentecostal minister and asylum seeker from Uganda who worked as a licensed nursing assistant at the University of Vermont Medical Center and a long-term care facility, was detained by ICE agents on February 4, 2026 as he left work at a Shelburne, Vermont assisted living facility. He said officers surrounded his car at gunpoint, pulled him out, slammed him on icy ground, and cuffed him as patients watched. Tendo was held for 16 days at the Strafford County Jail in Dover, New Hampshire, where he said he was initially denied diabetes, cholesterol, and allergy medications and described conditions including 40 men sharing one bathroom; a federal judge ordered his release on February 20 after ruling ICE had violated its own regulations by failing to provide an individualized basis for re-detaining him. Tendo fled Uganda in 2018 after he said government-aligned forces tortured him, cut off two of his fingers, and killed his brother and uncle over his political and voter-education work; his asylum claim was later denied, and he previously spent about three years in ICE detention in Texas, where he said he was denied insulin and later sued DHS, whose own investigators acknowledged wrongdoing. Colleagues and the Vermont AFL-CIO said he had complied with all required ICE check-ins, and Vermont's congressional delegation, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch and Rep. Becca Balint, called for him to be returned and afforded due process. Supporters raised more than $35,000 through a GoFundMe campaign for his legal bills and lost wages, and on March 20 about 200 supporters rallied outside the ICE office in St. Albans as he reported for a scheduled check-in, which passed without incident though he was ordered to check in again a month later.