Steven Tendo greets a supporter before reporting to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in St. Albans on Tuesday, Jan. 21. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerST. ALBANS — Steven Tendo, a Ugandan asylum-seeker living in Colchester whose case has drawn widespread attention in recent years, can stay in the U.S. for at least the next six months, federal immigration officials told him Tuesday morning. Tendo had feared he would be detained at a mandatory check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at the agency’s office in St. Albans Tuesday, just a day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who has promised sweeping deportations across the country.READ MORE Colchester asylum-seeker fears deportation as feds order him to report the day after Donald Trump takes office by Shaun Robinson January 20, 2025, 4:55 pmJanuary 20, 2025, 4:55 pm But Tendo — who is eligible to be deported because his application for asylum protection in the U.S. has been denied — was instead allowed to leave freely after meeting with law enforcement inside the office alongside one of his attorneys. Outside the building, some 75 people gathered to show support for Tendo, several of them holding signs and others handing out flyers. The crowd included, among others, members of Tendo’s church in Colchester; advocates from a local asylum-seeker support group; members of a union at the University of Vermont Medical Center, where Tendo works; and advocates from the immigrant rights group Migrant Justice.Tendo fled his native Uganda in 2018 after he was brutally tortured and members of his family were killed because government forces there viewed an advocacy organization he founded as a political threat, according to records and Tendo’s own accounts.He has said repeatedly that deporting him back to Uganda would be “a death sentence.”Since Tendo moved to Vermont in 2021, ICE officials have twice granted requests by his attorneys to hold off on deporting him. The agency has not yet issued a formal decision on his legal team’s latest such request, which it submitted on Friday, though officials nevertheless did not choose to detain Tendo on Tuesday. This story will be updated. Read the story on VTDigger here: Colchester asylum-seeker allowed to remain in the US for 6 months, officials say.