A faculty member at Ferris State University in Michigan has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the second arrest of a foreign scholar that’s drawn attention in the past week.
Sumith Gunasekera, who is originally from Sri Lanka, began working as a faculty member in the United States in 2009. The Trump administration describes him as an undocumented immigrant.
Gunasekera was taken into custody on November 12, but the Department of Homeland Security’s news release is dated Tuesday, nearly two weeks later.
A spokesperson for Ferris State said the university only learned of accusations against Gunasekera on Tuesday, and placed him on administrative leave while officials gather more information. Gunasekera is being held at North Lake Correctional Facility in western Michigan.
According to the Homeland Security news release, Gunasekera had run-ins with law enforcement over two decades ago, including criminal charges in Canada from 1998 that the government argued “made him ineligible for legal status in the United States.”
The news release states that Gunasekera was convicted in Ontario of “utter threat to cause death or bodily harm and sexual interference.” The latter charge was related to a minor, according to the release. He was sentenced to one month of incarceration and one year of probation.
In 2004, Gunasekera was convicted of disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, when he was a graduate student at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and was ordered to pay a fine.
Homeland Security’s release says that Gunasekera had “repeatedly attempted to manipulate our immigration system.” He entered the United States in 1998, left for Canada, and returned to the United States later that year on a student visa, the release states.
Gunasekera began serving as a graduate teaching assistant at UNLV in 2001, according to a now-deleted faculty page, and earned his Ph.D. in mathematics in 2009.
He was hired that year as an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and was promoted to associate professor, a tenured role, in 2015. A UT-Chattanooga faculty directory lists him as a full professor of mathematics with an appointment year of 2020.
Spokespeople for UNLV and UT-Chattanooga didn’t respond to requests for comment during the holiday week.
More recently, Gunasekera appears to have changed disciplines and restarted the tenure clock. The Ferris State spokesperson, David A. Murray, confirmed that Gunasekera was hired at Ferris State in 2023, and his faculty page says he is an assistant professor of marketing in the College of Business. The government’s news release says he identified himself to immigration officials as an associate professor.
Ferris State’s website also lists Gunasekera as director of the Data Analytics Consulting and Research Center.
Gunasekera’s arrest became public the same week as ICE detained a University of Oklahoma professor from Iran at an airport before flying to an academic conference. Vahid Abedini, an assistant professor of Iranian studies, was released after three days.
Abedini was in the United States legally on an H-1B visa, according to the co-director of Oklahoma’s Center for Middle East Studies. He had been hired by Oklahoma in June after serving as a visiting professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
When foreign scholars switch institutions, they typically must apply for a change of visa status. An immigration lawyer told The Chronicle that arresting someone with a pending visa status wasn’t typical.
It’s unclear why Abedini was singled out. He received a speeding ticket in 2024, according to The New York Times. A Homeland Security spokesperson said that Abedini was detained for “standard questioning.” Abedini said in a LinkedIn post that the arrest was “a deeply distressing experience.”
The Trump administration has for months scrutinized international students and scholars. During the spring, the government detained a number of foreign students who had engaged in pro-Palestinian activism. In September, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s attempted deportations violated students’ and scholars’ First Amendment rights.
In April, Homeland Security also revoked the legal status of thousands of students who held visas. Many were targeted because they appeared in a database that logs people’s criminal history, including minor offenses. After a barrage of lawsuits, the status terminations were reversed.
