Sister Leticia "Letty" Ugboaja has a routine. Every Sunday, she walks the same block in McAllen, Texas and steps into Our Lady of Sorrows for Mass, just a few doors down from her home. On June 28, however, she never made it inside.
That's because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents stopped her steps from the church, confiscated her rosary, and handcuffed her. Within hours, outraged lawmakers were on the phone with the Department of Homeland Security, demanding her release.
What Happened to Sister Letty?
Ugboaja, 56, is a member of the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy, a Catholic order founded in Nigeria. By day, she works as a registered nurse at South Texas Health System. On Sundays, she serves as an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion at her parish. She was still in her habit when agents stopped her a block from home and drove her roughly an hour to the El Valle Detention Facility in Raymondville.
What happened inside those walls is only partly known. Sister Norma Pimentel, a well-known figure in South Texas border ministry, later said Ugboaja called for help while in custody and asked for medication agents would not let her have. Pimentel described her as "very distraught and scared, and didn't understand what was happening." Ugboaja herself has not spoken publicly; the diocese says she is declining interviews on the advice of legal counsel.
Word of her detention spread fast. Our Lady of Sorrows posted to Facebook within the hour, asking parishioners to hold Sister Letty in prayer until she came home.
By the way... Ugboaja is in the United States legally. Neither the Diocese of Brownsville nor the lawmakers who intervened ever got a clear answer from DHS about why she was stopped in the first place, and no agency has explained why her rosary was taken. By all accounts, she simply didn't have documentation with her at the moment agents approached, though DHS has never confirmed what prompted the stop.
Parishioners gathered outside her house to wait, some in tears themselves, while Pimentel searched for paperwork to prove Ugboaja's legal status. By evening, lawmakers announced her release instead, and Pimentel rushed to the detention facility to meet her. Ugboaja walked out crying and into Pimentel's arms, a moment local television captured.
Many questions remain open, and the Diocese says it is still investigating.
Was This Enforcement, or Overreach?
For a moment, the arrest produced something Washington rarely sees: agreement across the aisle. U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, a Republican, said immigration enforcement should target violent criminals, not a nun on her way to church. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat, called for enforcement "focused on real threats to public safety." Bishop Daniel Flores called the entire episode "wildly disturbing" and asked that the protocols behind it be reformed.
Not everyone treated the resolution as a victory. Bobby Pulido, a Democrat running to unseat De La Cruz this fall, argued the story shouldn't have required two members of Congress and a call to the DHS secretary in the first place. He pointed to a pattern: a McAllen teenager was detained after a routine immigration check-in earlier this year, freed only after a similar burst of political pressure.
McAllen sits in a part of South Texas that backed President Trump in 2024, and Sister Letty's case is not the first local arrest to test that support. Lawmakers from both parties have now intervened multiple times this year on behalf of constituents swept up in enforcement, suggesting the disagreement here is less about party than about how aggressive ICE has become in their efforts.
More than two dozen denominations, including the Episcopal Church, the Mennonite Church, and the Union for Reform Judaism, have already sued DHS over the rescinded sensitive-locations policy that made Sister Letty's arrest possible. In February, a Massachusetts judge barred warrantless arrests at the churches named in one such case. But the injunction only covers the specific congregations that sued, and the Diocese of Brownsville is not among them, which is why Sister Letty's parish had no legal shield to invoke.
A newer Texas state law, which took effect this May after years of litigation, does explicitly exempt churches, schools, and health care facilities from its own internal immigration enforcement provisions. Texas, in other words, considers a church sanctuary enough to write into state law. But it was federal agents, unburdened by sanctuary laws and operating under their own set of rules, who stopped Sister Letty from entering hers.
What Happens When Church Stops Feeling Safe?
Churches, schools, and hospitals were long treated as "sensitive locations" where ICE rarely made arrests; that protection has been eroding for more than a year, and clergy have had to decide how to respond. Some see enforcement as a civic duty and others as a betrayal of the call to welcome the stranger, and that divide runs through congregations of every denomination.
Sister Pimentel said she is now telling every sister in her diocese to carry identification at all times, a precaution that would have sounded unthinkable a few years ago for women who have spent decades serving South Texas hospitals and parishes.
Sister Rose Patrice Kuhn, who ministers to migrants along the border, said foreign-born religious sisters across the region are now on edge. "It's really affecting them," she said. This is not the first time ICE agents and a congregation have collided since the sensitive-locations policy changed, and it is unlikely to be the last.
What Do You Think?
Sister Letty is home, but the questions her diocese raised are still open, and so are the ones for the rest of us. Should any distinction exist between how enforcement treats clergy and how it treats everyone else standing in line at church, at school, or in a hospital waiting room? And if neither legal status nor a habit were protection enough in this case, what would be?
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