Sister Letty did “everything the law has asked of her,” but she was still targeted. She worries about others facing this same crisis. Even Christians aren’t safe under Trump’s mass deportation agenda
The South Texas Catholic nun who was abducted by ICE last month said she feels she must speak out about her ongoing ordeal – the Trump administration is still seeking to deport her despite widespread backlash to her arrest – because there are too many others going through the same situation without the same kind of headlines that her outrageous case has received.
“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,” Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja said in her first public remarks since her June 28 abduction. “While she’s grateful to those who helped her, she said, that ‘does not mean I can stay quiet about what happened to me, or about what is still happening to others,’” the AP reported.
Sister Letty, who belongs to the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy and also serves the Rio Grande Valley as a registered nurse, was on her way to Sunday Mass when ICE detained her despite the fact that an immigration judge had previously granted her protection due to fears of persecution in Nigeria. Sister Letty said that federal agents ignored her plea to at least allow her to attend Mass and even confiscated her rosary. She was left in a state of heartbreak and confusion.
“Honestly, in that moment, I did not understand what was going on, what was happening to me,” she said. NBC News footage of her release later that same day showed her visibly shaken while being reunited with Sister Norma Pimenel, a Catholic Charities leader.
“Ugboaja said she did not want to remain silent about her situation and wants people in similar situations to have the opportunity to tell their story before they’re taken from their homes,” The Texas Tribune reported. “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,” she said.
But rather than allow Sister Letty to continue being a valued member of her community, the administration is reportedly still seeking to deport her – and to a country that she doesn’t even know. Attorney Carlos Moctezuma Garcia said federal immigration officials indicated “they are pushing to have Ugboaja deported to a third country, not her native Nigeria,” Border Report said.
“Which is very concerning for us,” Moctezuma Garcia told the outlet. “That is obviously not what we want.”
“The Trump administration’s third-country removal policy has been criticized by lawyers and human rights groups and has faced legal challenges,” the AP noted. “The Department of Homeland Security has said the agreements allow people seeking asylum in the U.S. to pursue protection in the other country, and that the agreements are used to try to address large backlogs in immigration courts.”
But Sister Letty already has protection – here in the United States. While an immigration judge denied her asylum application in 2019, she was granted “protection from removal to Nigeria, concluding that ‘she had met the high legal standard required to show it was more likely than not that she would face torture if returned there,’” USA Today reported.
Since then, she’s done “everything the law has asked of her,” Garcia said, including keeping her work permit current and going to all of her appointments.
The targeting of Sister Letty isn’t about the rule of law of making our outdated immigration system fairer – it’s about stripping legal protections from as many people as possible in order to kick them out, no matter how long they’ve lived here, no matter their family ties, no matter their place in their communities. Nor is the targeting of Sister Letty some sort of oversight or paperwork error. Just days ago, another two Rio Grande Valley faith leaders were also detained by ICE.
Religion News Service reports that Pastor Nepthali Zozaya Saucedo and Cinthia Sarai Cardona Otero, who are married, were arrested while traveling to a marriage retreat in North Carolina led by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. While a Latino Christian National Network board member said that the Assemblies of God pastors came to the U.S. legally and hold valid R-1 religious worker visas, ICE detained the couple and reportedly threatened them with prolonged family separation in order to pressure them into signing documents agreeing to self-deport.
Cardona Otero “described in detail the repeated attempts that she alleged immigration agents made to coerce them into signing papers: that they would be deported separately to different third countries, not their home in Mexico; that they could not make calls without signing the papers; and that they would face up to six months of incarceration without their sons,” Christianity Today reported.
The couple was finally released two days after their detention. They attended service that Sunday, where, like Sister Letty, Zozaya Saucedo made a tearful plea for immigrants still languishing in detention and separated from their families.
“As the body of Christ, we can intercede, and not just for our family and friends,” he said, “but also for people we maybe haven’t even seen, but who also endure pain, who also suffer injustice, who are also fighting to see the light of the sun again and have dignified food for themselves, a space to sleep and a space to be, and above all, a space to be reunited with their families.”
