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Rohingya asylum seeker released after seven weeks in ICE detention

Jul 21, 2026

Country of origin: Myanmar

Rohingya asylum seeker released after seven weeks in ICE detention
Photo via Instagram

Min Khant Zaw, a Rohingya and Kaman activist who fled genocide in Myanmar, was detained by ICE on July 21 at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport while returning from a West Coast trip to visit family. He spent seven weeks at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena before being released on Sept. 9 on a $40,000 bond. Zaw, a computer science graduate researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology, came to the U.S. in 2019 for a conference and filed for asylum in 2020 after his family, Rohingya activists and political dissidents, warned him it was unsafe to return amid violence against the Rohingya.​

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