Yep. You read that correctly. ICE arrested an honest-to-God Roman Catholic nun. I guess orphans and puppies will be next.
Anyway, on a recent Sunday morning, Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja was doing something that should have been completely routine. Dressed in her religious habit, the 56-year-old nun was walking the short distance from her home in McAllen, Texas, to Sunday Mass. Instead of making it to church, she found herself in handcuffs after being detained by ICE agents.
For some reason, federal immigration agents decided that she was someone who needed to be stopped and taken into custody.
Sister Letty is originally from Nigeria and has spent years serving the South Texas community. First as a certified nursing assistant and later as a registered nurse. By every public account, she has dedicated her life to caring for other people, both through her faith and through her work in health care.
According to the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, Sister Letty called for help while she was in custody because agents were transporting her to the ICE detention facility in Raymondville. Before being taken to the ICE facility, she required medication, but federal agents would not allow her to retrieve it, allegedly.
Whether you support strict immigration enforcement or not, that should concern you. Human beings do not stop being human because they have been detained.
Church officials said Sister Letty was distraught and did not understand what was happening. Meanwhile, church leaders began scrambling to gather documents showing that she was legally present in the United States.
Then something pretty amazing happened.
Not only did criticism come from immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers, but Republican Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz stepped in as well. I never thought I’d see the day when one of the Rs is telling ICE they screwed up.
Congresswoman De La Cruz contacted the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to secure Sister Letty’s release. She publicly stated that immigration enforcement should focus on violent criminals and that a Catholic nun on her way to church was not a threat to the community. Ya think?
Democratic Representatives Henry Cuellar, Vicente Gonzalez, and Joaquin Castro also intervened. Within hours, Sister Letty was released.
The Diocese of Brownsville has made it clear that many questions remain unanswered. Bishop Daniel Flores called the circumstances surrounding Sister Letty’s detention “wildly disturbing” and argued that enforcement protocols allowing someone to be handcuffed while peacefully walking to church deserve serious reform. That’s putting it lightly. The word ‘abolish’ comes to mind, personally.
However, one major question still hangs over this entire story.
Why?
What exactly caused ICE agents to look at a woman in a nun’s habit walking to Sunday Mass and conclude that she should be put in handcuffs?
Of course, DHS has been tight-lipped on the matter.
It is hard to ignore one blaringly obvious fact. Sister Letty is a Black woman from Nigeria. She was not trying to conceal who she was. She was dressed as a Catholic nun and walking to church in broad daylight. If that visible religious habit, her peaceful behavior, and her years of service to the community were not enough to prevent her detention, what exactly did the agents see that made them believe she belonged in restraints?
I think it’s fair to ask whether she would have been stopped at all if she wasn’t a person of color. When an incident like this occurs without a clear public explanation, it can’t be helped if the public sees this as a racist arrest given the facts as they’re known and ICE’s reputation.
After the incident, Julio Salinas, co-chair of the Texas Democratic Party’s Hispanic Caucus, summed up why this case resonated with so many people when he said, “This is a stark wake-up call for all of us. It proves one harrowing truth: even the best of us are not safe.”
The public has repeatedly been told that enforcement efforts are focused on dangerous criminals. Incidents like this inevitably lead people to determine those priorities are not being followed in practice.
If masked federal agents can detain a Catholic nun in her habit while she is walking to Sunday Mass, deny her access to medication, and only release her after politicians from both parties intervene, then the public deserves far more than the silence they’ve been getting.
(Sources)
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