Venkata Vasamsetty has lived in the United States since 1999 and spent more than a decade substitute teaching special-needs students in Wake County. On August 11, she walked into ICE's Charlotte field office for a scheduled check-in and did not walk back out. She has been held ever since, first in North Carolina and now at a detention center in rural Georgia, as her family and attorney fight to get her released.
The 59-year-old Cary resident was detained during what should have been a routine administrative check-in, according to the News & Observer. ICE check-ins are usually required for people with pending immigration cases or deportation proceedings, but Vasamsetty's case had already been dismissed by an immigration judge on May 19. Her attorney, Helen Parsonage, alleges Vasamsetty was unlawfully detained and has called the check-in a trap set for her client, per the same report.
The Department of Homeland Security signed a new Notice to Appear accusing Vasamsetty of abandoning her green card on the same day she was detained, August 11, and that notice was uploaded to her file the following day. DHS has said Vasamsetty violated her residency conditions, while the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia has denied that she was unlawfully detained and argued the notice was properly signed and issued that day, according to the newspaper's account.
A Family Crisis Rooted in a Sick Father's Care
The dispute traces back to July 2022, when Vasamsetty traveled to India to visit her sick father. She did not return to the United States until February 2023, contracting COVID-19 during the delayed trip home, which pushed her absence past seven months. While overseas, she was in the process of purchasing a home in North Carolina and completed the transaction from abroad, which her legal team submitted as evidence of her continuous intent to maintain U.S. residency, The Tribune reports.
Under USCIS guidance, a continuous absence exceeding 180 days automatically triggers heightened inspection of a lawful permanent resident upon return, though the person remains a permanent resident until the green card is formally revoked. Vasamsetty re-entered the country through Raleigh-Durham International Airport in February 2023, where DHS officers first flagged her absence and began the green-card abandonment allegations, according to Mathrubhumi. Federal regulations require border officers to issue a formal Notice to Appear and refer such admissibility questions to an immigration judge rather than revoke a green card unilaterally.
A Judge Dismissed the Case, But ICE Detained Her Anyway
A Charlotte immigration judge ordered DHS on March 9 to provide evidence that Vasamsetty had abandoned her green card. DHS failed to produce that evidence by a May 8 deadline, and the immigration judge dismissed the case against her on May 19. Vasamsetty then attended another Charlotte check-in on July 11 without incident, before ICE ordered her to report again on August 11 — the appointment where she was detained and taken to the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, on August 12.
That facility has its own troubled history. Its federal ICE contract was ended in 2021 following a congressional investigation into medical misconduct, but ICE renewed a contract with private operator LaSalle Corrections to resume detainee housing there in late 2025, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The facility sits more than 300 miles from Charlotte, far from Vasamsetty's family and legal team in North Carolina.
Diabetes Care and Weight Loss Raise Alarm
Vasamsetty has type 2 diabetes, and her family says she did not receive insulin during her first two days in detention and has since received it only intermittently, according to Teja Vasamsetty, per the News & Observer's reporting. By her fourth day in custody, she had lost five pounds and was eating only 25% to 30% of her usual calories. She was offered a beef sandwich on August 11, which conflicted with her dietary needs.
DHS has denied allegations that Vasamsetty received inadequate treatment or food in custody, saying through a spokesperson that ICE provides nutritionally adequate meals to people in its custody and allows religious diet accommodations through established facility procedures. A DHS spokesperson also said Vasamsetty will receive due process and remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings. Teja Vasamsetty told the paper her mother has been in soldier mode while detained, describing her as the pillar of their family.
Emergency Federal Lawsuit Seeks Her Release
Parsonage filed an emergency habeas corpus petition on Vasamsetty's behalf, formally titled Vasamsetty v. Warden of Irwin County Detention Center et al., in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia on August 12, according to court records cited by NRI Pulse. A federal judge ordered DHS officials on August 13 to respond within three days and state the legal authority for detaining Vasamsetty after her immigration case had already been terminated, per Newsweek.
On August 14, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia urged the court to order a bond hearing instead of ruling on the habeas petition directly. Parsonage said Vasamsetty is likely to have a bond hearing this week. Her case adds to a national surge in similar litigation: immigrants filed more than 69,000 emergency federal habeas corpus petitions challenging ICE detentions nationwide across 2025 and 2026, according to a ProPublica analysis cited by Newsweek.
Community Support and a Family Left Scrambling
A petition supporting Vasamsetty had gathered over 4,500 signatures as of Thursday. Her son, Yash Vasamsetty, is an immigration attorney with an 8-month-old child, and her daughter, Teja Vasamsetty, is a physician with a 2-year-old child; both have said their mother supported them through law school and medical school, respectively. North Carolina state Rep. Jay Chaudhari is working with members of Congress to try to secure her release.
Vasamsetty had been substituting for a special-needs teacher within the Wake County Public School System, the largest school district in North Carolina and the 14th-largest in the nation, with nearly 160,000 students across 198 schools. She has worked as a Wake substitute teacher since 2013, and the school now must find a different substitute for the new school year.
The case fits a broader pattern of ICE enforcement actions against long-term Indian nationals with lawful status; ICE detained more than 27,800 Indian nationals between 2022 and 2025, according to Rediff. Similar cases have surfaced elsewhere this month, including a Pierce County woman's path to citizenship after ICE detention and a Maine nurse who was detained and later released. As of Thursday, Vasamsetty remained in ICE custody as her legal team awaited word on a bond hearing.
