PORTLAND (WGME) — Congresswoman Chellie Pingree says she’s heading to Texas to visit a teen from Maine who’s been held by ICE for months.
Pingree says she and six other members of Congress, in their authority as members of Congress, will tour the Dilley facility Tuesday.
Pingree is calling for the release of 19-year-old Olivia Andre, who’s been held by ICE since November, even though ICE released her mother and siblings back to Maine.
Pingree posted a video of herself at the airport Monday, saying she plans to meet with Andre about her detainment.
“We believe this is completely illegal, and it is time to let this poor woman go,” Pingree said. “There are court proceedings going on, got a chance to talk with her a little bit about that and mostly that everybody back in Maine is cheering for her with her family, and we’re all hoping for her immediate release. We all know how hard this has been to be separate from her family, taken away from nursing school, where she has been a student and the community that she loves.”
ICE says Andre is here illegally but didn’t explain why the rest of her family was released and she wasn’t.
Pingree says Andre was a first-year nursing student in Portland at the time she was taken.