(OSV News) — Give those targeted in immigration enforcement operations “the chance to be heard,” said a religious sister detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for several hours June 28, amid an intended third-country deportation effort.
On July 23, Sister Leticia Ugboaja delivered a prepared statement during a press conference hosted by Our Lady of Sorrows Church in McAllen, Texas, located at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Almost a month prior to the media event, Sister Leticia had been walking to Sunday Mass at the church, dressed in her religious habit, when ICE agents accosted and detained her. She was released after several hours following the intervention of several congressional representatives.
Accompanying Sister Leticia at the press conference were her attorney, Carlos Moctezuma García, and Sister Norma Pimentel, a member of the Missionaries of Jesus and executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, located in the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas. The diocese uploaded a recording of the full press conference to its YouTube channel.
At the press conference, Sister Leticia — a member of the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy, a congregation founded in Nigeria, and a registered nurse who has worked in local healthcare for more than a decade — recounted her experience in English, with Sister Norma providing a Spanish translation of the statement.
García then explained his client’s immigration status, saying that in 2019, a judge denied Sister Leticia’s petition for asylum.
Yet “in that same decision,” he said, the judge “granted her protection from removal to Nigeria” under the United Nations’ convention against torture, “finding she had met the high legal standard required to show it was more likely than not that she would face torture if returned there.”
Over the past several years, Nigeria has seen ongoing violence against both Christians and Muslims by Islamic extremists. Kidnappings of Catholic women religious were documented in 2017 and 2018, ahead of Sister Leticia’s asylum denial.
Although the judge’s removal protection “legally bars” the U.S. from deporting her to Nigeria, he said, Sister Leticia “remains as a technical matter under a final order of removal.”
However, García clarified, “she has done everything the law has asked of her,” and holds “a valid employment authorization document” while attending all required appointments with immigration officials.
He said that her June 28 detention was part of an attempt to remove Sister Leticia “not to Nigeria but to a third country,” a move that marks both “a separate legal pathway from the one her protection forecloses,” and “the subject of active litigation in federal courts nationwide.”
García said his client has a July 28 appointment with immigration officials, and expressed the hope that an ankle monitor would not be placed on Sister Leticia as part of that process.
Sister Leticia recalled that as she walked to the church, she was meditating on the Mass readings and preparing to serve as an extraordinary minister of holy Communion when agents stopped her.
“Honestly, in that moment, I did not understand what was going on, what was happening to me,” she said. “I was very much afraid, with cold sweat. I could just hear my heart, very tachycardic.”
Her long record of living and serving in the McAllen area compounded her disorientation.
“I have been in this community … more than a decade,” she said. “I have cared for the sick as a nurse in various hospitals. I did not expect (to be accosted by immigration enforcement) on an ordinary Sunday morning, when people should be ready to go to Mass, to worship the Lord, on the street here, just in front of the school. I have walked here, passed by this same road countless number of times.”
Her voice filled with emotion as she described being denied the opportunity to attend Mass.
“As we all know, Sunday Mass is obligatory,” she said. “And we have to attend Mass every day if you can. … And for me, not to go to Mass on Sunday, not to receive Communion, it was very, very heartbreaking for me.”
Sister Leticia had even implored the immigration enforcement agents for the chance to first attend the liturgy and receive holy Communion.
But “even when I told (them), ‘Can I go to Mass; can I just attend Mass, can I receive Communion?’, the answer was ‘no,'” said Sister Leticia.
She also described feeling vulnerable as “just a small woman, a nun” with “my rosary, my key and my phone” amid “two men” who were “armed.”
The experience is “still hurting me up to today,” she said.
Saying she had “prayed a great deal” since her detention, Sister Leticia stressed that her experience was not unique.
“I am not the only one,” she said. “There are many others in this same situation — people who have been given some form of protection under our laws, who have followed every rule asked of them, and who still live with uncertainty about where they might be sent, and whether anyone will tell them before it happens.”
Sister Leticia stressed that her faith “teaches me not to be silent,” since neither silence nor fear will “solve any problem.”
“I’m speaking this out of peace and honesty in my heart,” she said. “What I am asking is just simple. Before anyone, anyone, anyone is being taken into custody, or being taken anywhere — from home, from their parishes, from their places of work, or even walking on the streets — just .. give them the chance, give them the opportunity, so that they can be heard.”
Sister Leticia added, “I believe every person in this situation like me deserves to be heard, deserves to be listened to, deserves to be given attention and opportunity, and to give them another chance to say what they have (to say).”
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