Catholic nun detained en route to Texas mass, released after intervention
An ICE detention broke up Sister Leticia Ugboaja’s walk to Mass in McAllen, then ended the same day after congressional intervention.
Federal immigration agents detained Sister Leticia Ugboaja as she walked to Our Lady of Sorrows Church in McAllen, Texas, on Sunday, June 28, and released her later the same day after several congressional representatives pressed for her return. The Catholic Diocese of Brownsville said the case involved a Nigerian-born nun known as Sister Letty, and it quickly drew bipartisan concern from South Texas lawmakers.
Ugboaja is a member of the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy, a congregation founded in Nigeria. The diocese said she has spent nearly a decade serving the Rio Grande Valley and works as a registered nurse at South Texas Health System in McAllen. Before becoming a nurse, she spent 10 years as a certified nursing assistant at DHR Health in Edinburg.
Our Lady of Sorrows said Ugboaja serves there as an extraordinary minister of holy Communion. Sister Norma Pimentel, who manages the diocese’s charitable arm, said Sister Letty lives about a block from the church, underscoring how short the walk was when agents stopped her before Mass.
The church sits in McAllen, just a few miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, in a region where immigration enforcement carries immediate political and pastoral weight. Bishop Daniel E. Flores called the detention “wildly disturbing,” a sharp rebuke that reflected the unease spreading among border-area Catholics and other foreign-born religious workers.
The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had not publicly explained the arrest since Sunday, leaving unanswered what grounds agents cited for taking a nun in religious habit into custody on her way to Mass. That silence sharpened questions about how the detention was justified and what protections, if any, were weighed before she was released.
The episode landed amid intensified immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, including operations near houses of worship, and it has made some clergy and immigrant religious workers more cautious in public. In South Texas, the practical details of the arrest mattered as much as the symbolism: a nurse, a parish minister, and a nun on a short walk to church were pulled into federal custody and then freed only after direct intervention from elected officials.
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