ICE detained Nun Leticia Ugboaja on Sunday morning as she walked to Nuestra Señora de los Dolores for mass in Texas, taking her to El Valle in Raymondville before releasing her about 10 hours later. By Sunday night, Norma Pimentel was embracing the Nigerian-born religious sister after a detention that church leaders say should never have happened.
Ugboaja was on her way to church at 9.00 a.m. when immigration agents intercepted her, confiscated her Bible and rosary, and held her at the detention center. She later phoned a priest from inside El Valle, and that call set off a scramble that brought in Mónica De La Cruz, Vicente González, Henry Cuéllar and church authorities, all pressing for the same result: her release before the night was over.
The case mattered immediately because it landed in the middle of a larger immigration crackdown that Donald Trump promised during his reelection campaign and that was being carried out after he took office in January 2025. ICE detention centers were holding about 40,000 people per day at that point, and one year later that number had risen by more than 75 percent, according to the Consejo Americano de Inmigración.
That wider backdrop makes the local reaction sharper, not smaller. The Diocese said Ugboaja serves as a volunteer extraordinary minister of communion at Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, works as a nurse at the Sistema de Salud del Sur de Texas of the Centro Médico de McAllen, and had previously spent a decade as a nursing assistant in Edinburg. It also said this was the first arrest of a religious sister it had faced, which is why the episode cut so deeply through the parish and beyond it.
Still unanswered is the most basic question: what legal basis did ICE use to detain her, and why was a woman headed peacefully to mass treated as a handcuffed enforcement case at all? Arzobispo Daniel E. Flores said the DHS protocols that allow that kind of detention are deeply troubling and must be reformed, while the Diocese said it is still gathering information with lawyers about what caused the arrest and how it was carried out.
For Ugboaja, the day ended with a release and an embrace, but not with clarity. For the church, the next step is not celebration alone but explanation, because the facts of Sunday morning now demand one.
