Former Syracuse men’s basketball player John Bol Ajak was detained by ICE, Syracuse.com reported Thursday.
Ajak, 26, is being held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania after first being taken to the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility, per a college faculty member.
“It was just [overwhelmingly] sad when I heard he got taken,” former SU head coach Jim Boeheim told Syracuse.com. “They’re taking good people out of our country.”
The news comes after Ajak was arrested four times in the past few months for various offenses on campus, two of which were for allegedly trespassing at Syracuse’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. He was also charged with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.
Ajak, who was born in Natinga, South Sudan and left before he was 2 years old, was released from jail on Feb. 18 after his most recent arrest, per the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office. Five days later, Ajak missed a scheduled court appearance.
Two sources confirmed to Syracuse.com that Ajak’s student visa had expired, but he was recently trying to take graduate school courses. He earned his undergraduate degree in 2023 but didn’t finish his graduate degree.
Since then, he’d been homeless and couch surfing, Syracuse.com reported, before being detained by ICE.
Ajak came to the United States at 14 to pursue his basketball career. He had lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for most of his life after his family fled from his home country of South Sudan when he was 19 months old.
A few years after finding his form in the U.S., Ajak committed to Syracuse and played with the Orange from 2020-23, averaging 0.6 points per game across the three years. In his junior year in 2023, he averaged 1.9 rebounds in a career-high 9.3 minutes per game.
Ajak was with SU for one March Madness appearance in 2021, when the Orange advanced to the Sweet 16 as a No. 11 seed. Ajak played one minute in their first-round victory over No. 6 seed San Diego State but didn’t play for the rest of Syracuse’s run.
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