UMass Dartmouth Murder Suspect Overstayed Tourist Visa, Received Deferred Action Under Both Biden and Trump

Marvins Antoine, an 18-year-old freshman running back for UMass Dartmouth, was stabbed to death early Saturday, September 19, in a Wendy's parking lot in Providence, Rhode Island, after an altercation that started at a nightclub across the street. A teammate, 19-year-old defensive back Kensley Macean, was also stabbed and survived. Six days later, the case has widened from a campus tragedy into a fight over immigration enforcement.

What happened that night

According to Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez, Antoine, Macean and other UMass Dartmouth football players went to Mezzo Lounge after the team's Friday night home loss to Framingham State, 23-21. A dispute involving a woman and people waiting in line at the club moved across Charles Street to a Wendy's parking lot around 12:30 a.m. Chief Perez said there is no indication the players knew their attacker.

Antoine was stabbed in the chest and pronounced dead at Rhode Island Hospital. Macean suffered non-life-threatening wounds to his head, neck and left arm, Providence police said. Investigators used Flock license-plate-reader cameras to trace a vehicle leaving the scene back to UMass Dartmouth's campus, about 30 miles away, where campus police arrested 19-year-old student Chukwunonso Uzoma-Eze that Saturday morning. He is not on the football team, and police said there's no indication he knew either victim. Providence's Board of Licenses shut down Mezzo Lounge for three days following an emergency hearing, according to Le Floridien.

On Monday, September 21, Uzoma-Eze pleaded not guilty to a fugitive-from-justice charge in New Bedford District Court, according to CBS News. He was ordered held without bail and agreed to be extradited to Rhode Island to face the murder charge. A status hearing is scheduled for September 28. Court records reviewed by Boston.com, as reported by the Fall River Reporter, state police could not confirm a Social Security number for him and that he told officers he had previously attempted suicide, asking, "Can you just shoot me?" He was taken to a behavioral health center and later to Bridgewater State Hospital.

Uzoma-Eze's attorney, Jay Odunukwe, told CBS News his client has no criminal record. "He's a very bright student, very nice guy, goes to church with his family regularly," Odunukwe said. "The evidence will show eventually that he was basically minding his business."

The immigration history

Multiple federal law enforcement sources told Fox News that Uzoma-Eze, a Nigerian national, entered the U.S. on a B-2 tourist visa in 2015 and received two extensions under the Obama administration before his authorized stay expired and he remained in the country anyway. The Biden administration approved his request for deferred action in September 2022, according to those sources. He applied again in February 2025 and October 2025; the Trump administration approved the October 2025 request on October 8, 2025, less than a year before the killing.

Deferred action is a discretionary decision to temporarily delay someone's removal. It does not grant lawful immigration status. The Department of Homeland Security said Uzoma-Eze applied for employment authorization in August 2023, which was rejected the following month, and applied again in February 2025 based on his deferred action, a request DHS says remains pending. DHS also said that if he is convicted of murder, he will lose his deferred action.

NY Post and Yahoo News republished the same Fox News reporting on Uzoma-Eze's immigration file, and no outlet in this reporting has independently verified additional details beyond what those federal sources described. CBS News's initial coverage of the case, published September 21, made no mention of Uzoma-Eze's visa history or deferred-action status at all. That detail only became public through the federal sources cited by Fox News.

Immigration hawks and their critics

Immigration hawks have a reasonable point: a man overstayed his visa in 2015, never gained lawful status over more than a decade, and was twice granted temporary protection from removal by two different administrations without the underlying overstay ever getting resolved one way or the other. That raises a legitimate question about whether deferred action functions as an off-ramp or just an indefinite holding pattern.

But nothing in the record establishes Uzoma-Eze had any criminal history, any prior red flag, or any reason immigration officials should have treated his case differently before Saturday's stabbing. His attorney says he has no criminal record. DHS's own file shows one employment authorization request was denied in 2023, meaning his case did get scrutiny, just not the kind that predicted violence. Deferred action grants happen for many reasons, including humanitarian and prosecutorial-discretion factors not disclosed in these reports, and a single case, however tragic, doesn't prove a systemic vetting failure on its own.

What's undisputed is the timeline: two administrations, six years apart, made the same discretionary call to let Uzoma-Eze stay. Whether that decision should have been different is now a policy argument. Whether he killed Marvins Antoine is a question for a Rhode Island jury, starting with the September 28 status hearing in New Bedford District Court.