A former Indianapolis Colts linebacker from Kenya was deported by ICE final month, the company said in a statement Saturday, citing an overstayed visa and a historical past of arrests.
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Daniel Ogama Adongo, 37, was faraway from the nation on June 20 after ICE mentioned he overstayed a visa in 2016, the yr after his NFL profession ended. An immigration decide had ordered his removing in late March.
Attorneys who beforehand represented Adongo didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. NBC News was unable to contact Adongo or decide his present authorized representatives for remark.
Adongo, a former rugby player, turned the primary Kenyan to play within the NFL after the Colts signed him in 2013.
The Indianapolis Star reported that court records showed Adongo had run-ins with the regulation throughout and after his time with the Colts and was at instances discovered incompetent to face trial. His legal professional and others have raised the chance that he sustained a traumatic mind harm throughout his soccer and rugby careers.
ICE mentioned Adongo was convicted of legal mischief with harm, a misdemeanor, in 2020 and sentenced to 364 days in jail; court docket data present that, with credit score for time served, he was in the end ordered to serve six months in county jail. The company mentioned he additionally confronted expenses — together with felony intimidation, battery and disorderly conduct — that didn’t end in conviction. Court data present these expenses had been all dismissed.
ICE mentioned Adongo’s most up-to-date expenses fell underneath the Laken Riley Act, which requires the company to detain undocumented immigrants who’re arrested on suspicion of, charged with or convicted of “burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.” Critics of the regulation have mentioned it strips away due course of for immigrants accused — however not convicted of — sure crimes. ICE didn’t specify which expenses fell underneath the act.
“This dangerous individual was clearly a threat to the community, which is now safer since he’s been removed,” ICE Chicago Assistant Field Office Director Douglas Thompson mentioned within the assertion. “Those who violate immigration law are held equally accountable, including former professional athletes.”
Adongo’s attorneys had beforehand attributed his arrests to psychological sickness, in line with the Indianapolis Star. His protection legal professional cited a 2020 report wherein a physician who examined Adongo on the St. Joseph Regional Medical Center described him as “acutely psychotic with traumatic brain injury.”
A psychological well being social employee who handled Adongo for years wrote that he suffered from an “undisclosed mental illness which is highly speculated to be Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE,” the Star reported.
CTE is a mind situation attributable to repeated head accidents, sometimes sustained over a few years. It can’t be identified in a dwelling affected person — solely by way of an post-mortem. About one-third of former NFL players suspect they’ve the illness, in line with a 2024 survey. The NFL first acknowledged the hyperlink between CTE and soccer in 2016.
DHS didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the questions Adongo’s household and attorneys have raised about his psychological state and attainable mind harm.
