Hello!

We are the friends and family of Mamady Camara. Mamady, age 20, an upbeat, hard-working legal immigrant — and recent graduate of Ypsilanti High School — was unjustly detained by ICE on January 28, 2026. He has spent the last several weeks in a grim detainment camp in Northern Michigan. His lawyers have arranged an upcoming bond hearing, where a judge may release him once he pays a bond. Please help us raise the funds necessary to free Mamady from unjust incarceration and return him to his loving family! We are all extremely grateful for anything you can contribute. In a time when immigrants are facing intense fear, separation, imprisonment and deportation, we feel it’s up to all of us to offer a helping hand and do what we can to protect the most vulnerable in our communities. THANK YOU for joining in and helping a special young man reunite with his loved ones and continue to build a meaningful life in America.

WHO IS MAMADY?

After a childhood of hardship, Mamady immigrated to the United States from Guinea, West Africa in 2023, at age 17, fleeing civil unrest and violence. He was fortunate to have wonderful relatives in Ypsilanti, Michigan — including his cousins Hadja and Kairaba, an aunt and uncle, and others — who lovingly welcomed him in.

Though his formal schooling had been constrained, Mamady applied himself fiercely to school work, and last summer graduated from the ACCE program through Ypsilanti Schools, receiving his high school diploma, a proud moment. Soon after, he enrolled at the local community college and also received a work visa. He began working a few nights a week as a home health aide and caregiver for an area senior, 89-year-old Hal Rothbart — a Navy Veteran who spent the bulk of his career working at the University of Michigan’s student health service and is known for his decades of involvement with the Ann Arbor arts and theater communities — who is largely bedbound after a debilitating stroke eight years ago. Caring for an immobilized, nonverbal patient can be thankless, stressful work, but Mamady and Hal built an immediate, energetic rapport.

Mamady has quickly become respected and beloved by the Rothbart Family and other friends, family and neighbors in the Ypsilanti/ Ann Arbor community for his lively energy, his radiant and indomitable spirit, his compassionate caregiving, and his focused work ethic. He’s passionate about helping folks in his community, and his main hobbies are music and hoops, especially cheering on the University of Michigan men’s and women's basketball teams. Mamady’s goal, once freed from detention, is to complete classes at Washtenaw Community College and become a healthcare professional as a nurse or a patient care technician.

GETTING DETAINED

When Mamady arrived in the United States as an asylum seeker, he filed all of the necessary paperwork with the help of a skilled immigration lawyer and was released to his family in Ypsilanti. For the last several decades, asylum seekers have been allowed to live and work in the U.S. while their case works its way through the court system, which can take years. Things have changed drastically in the past few months and now some immigrants like Mamady — who are here legally, have valid work permits and no criminal record — are being arbitrarily seized.

On January 28, 2026, Mamady went to the ICE office in Detroit for what appeared to be a routine “check-in” appointment, accompanied by his lawyer, his cousin Hadja, and Hal Rothbart’s son Davy, a journalist. At the appointment, with little explanation, Mamady was detained. He was then sent to the sprawling North Lake Detention Center in the desolate woods of Northern Michigan. He has spent the past several weeks in a cold, cramped cell. While the corrections officers seem to be professional and cordial, sickness and desperation abounds at North Lake. Many detainees are being deported to their home countries, where danger awaits them, with no due process. Jail is no place for Mamady, a young man six months out of high school who since coming to the U.S. has followed every government request, attended every appointment, and committed no crime.

BRINGING MAMADY HOME

Thanks to the concerted efforts of Mamady’s talented lawyers, his family, and his friends, Mamady will soon have a hearing where he is likely to be released — if he can pay a bond. These bonds tend to range from $10,000 to $25,000. This is not the forum for us to share our feelings about the government strategy behind these bond payments — which have only surfaced in the past few months — but please talk to us personally and we’ll get into it with you. The long and short of it is that we need to urgently raise these funds so that they will be available to cover his bond and get him released.

Your contribution here — in any amount — will go toward freeing Mamady from unjust imprisonment by ICE, returning him to his community in Southeast Michigan, and reuniting him with his family, friends, and loved ones.

It is not clear what the exact amount needed for his bond will be. If we’re able to raise the money for his bond and a surplus remains, it will go toward his continued legal expenses over the months and years to come as he pursues his asylum claim. Mamady has also stated that he hopes he can use any additional funds he might receive to help others detained by ICE gain their freedom.

We'll keep you posted on Mamady’s court hearings and how his case unfolds. While he is just one of the tens of thousands currently being held unjustly in mass immigrant detention centers, he matters to us, he matters to his community, and he is an honorable, stellar young man who deserves our generous support. In our opinion, it is immigrants like Mamady Camara who will help America thrive for generations to come. THANK YOU for doing what you can to help him.

—Davy Rothbart; Hadja Talawali; Kairaba Soumaoro; Sasha Gusikhin; and Barbara Brodsky Rothbart, along with Mamady's friends & family

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

—Excerpt from a sonnet by Emma Lazarus which is cast in bronze upon the Statue of Liberty.