Photo: Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP/Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP
In late June, 56-year-old Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja, a Roman Catholic nun in South Texas, was walking to Sunday Mass, dressed in her white habit and carrying her rosary, when two armed ICE officers put her under arrest and detained her for several hours. Now, Ugboaja — who is from Nigeria and faces persecution if she returns — is speaking up about the “heartbreaking” ordeal.
At a press conference at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in McAllen on Thursday, Ugboaja recalled breaking out into a cold sweat when the officers approached her. She felt disoriented: “Honestly, in that moment, I did not understand what was going on, what was happening to me.” Ugboaja begged the officers to let her at least attend Mass and receive communion, which they denied her. “It was very, very heartbreaking for me,” Ugboaja continued.
Ugboaja has lived in South Texas, where she’s also worked as a registered nurse across multiple area hospitals, for a decade. In 2019, an immigration judge denied her request for asylum but granted her protection from her removal to Nigeria because of the likelihood that she’d face torture there. Ugboaja is still technically under a first order of removal since she was denied asylum, her attorney, Carlos Garcia, said during Thursday’s conference. Garcia also said ICE did not adequately explain why Ugboaja was being detained and planned to deport her to a third country — one of this administration’s many cruel immigration-crackdown specialities — despite the fact that she’d complied with the conditions of her protection order, attended scheduled immigration appointments, and held a valid work permit. Ugboaja was ultimately released from custody after parish members raised awareness about her detention on social media and members of Congress intervened. Her ICE check-in appointment is July 28.
“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,” Ugboaja said on Thursday. “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.”
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