Nun Detained on Way to Mass, Released After Three Congressmen Claim Credit

For more than a decade, immigration agents largely avoided entering places of worship to make arrests, under a "sensitive locations" policy formalized by ICE Director John Morton in October 2011. The Department of Homeland Security rescinded that policy on January 21, 2025, removing the restriction entirely. Sister Letty Ugboaja's detention this past Sunday, while walking to morning Mass in McAllen, shows what enforcement looks like without it.

Sister Letty Ugboaja returned home Sunday night after a day in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, ending a detention that began as she walked to morning Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows Parish in McAllen. Her release came not through a court order or a public ICE statement, but through a sequence of competing congressional press releases, each crediting a different official for the outcome.

Our Lady of Sorrows is located at 1108 West Hackberry Avenue in McAllen, a Diocese of Brownsville parish with an adjoining Catholic school. The parish holds four Masses on Sundays, including a 9 a.m. service, the same hour Pimentel said Ugboaja was detained on her way to church.

ICE detained Ugboaja, a member of the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy congregation, at approximately 9 a.m. Sunday, according to Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, who said an ICE agent told her he would follow up with more information and never did. The agency has issued no public statement explaining the detention or confirming the circumstances of her release. That silence has left local reporting, congressional statements, and parish accounts as the only available record of what happened.

U.S. Representative Monica De La Cruz said she spoke directly with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and that her office worked closely with DHS to resolve the matter. She also said publicly that immigration enforcement should target violent criminals, not a Catholic nun on her way to church. U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, said he communicated with both Mullin and White House border czar Tom Homan, and that his office secured a release date moved up from Monday to Sunday night. U.S. Representative Vicente Gonzalez said his office had separately advocated on Ugboaja's behalf throughout the detention, calling the case a product of the administration's broader immigration enforcement approach. All three statements describe direct engagement with federal officials. None of them describe the same sequence of events in the same way, and none address why the detention occurred in the first place.

The case has already entered the 2026 election cycle. Bobby Pulido, the Democratic nominee challenging De La Cruz in District 15 this November, posted a video calling on elected officials to take action while Ugboaja remained in custody. Her detention, in other words, became a campaign issue before it became a resolved one.

The overlapping claims among the three congressional offices are not unusual in cases involving high-profile detentions, where offices often compete to be seen as the decisive intervention once a resolution becomes public. What is unusual here is the subject matter. A religious sister detained en route to Mass is the kind of case that draws bipartisan statements almost by default, since neither party benefits politically from being seen as indifferent to it. The result, in this instance, was three Texas representatives, one Republican and two Democrats, all publicly thanking the same DHS leadership for correcting a problem that DHS itself has not acknowledged creating.

The detention fits a documented pattern rather than standing as an isolated event. DHS eliminated its longstanding "sensitive locations" policy, which had restricted immigration enforcement near churches, schools, and hospitals, in January 2025. Religion News Service has tracked roughly a dozen detentions in or near churches since the policy change took effect. Ugboaja's case is the most prominent instance reported in the Rio Grande Valley to date, and it arrives amid broader scrutiny of detention conditions and clergy access nationally, including ongoing litigation over faith leaders' access to detainees in Chicago and Minneapolis.

The Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, through spokeswoman Brenda Nettles Riojas, said Sunday it was still confirming details of the case and would provide further information once available. As of this writing, the diocese had not issued a follow-up statement addressing Ugboaja's release or the circumstances that led to her detention.

DHS has not issued a public statement on Ugboaja's detention or release as of this writing. Multiple outlets, including KSAT and ValleyCentral, reported that ICE did not respond to requests for comment. The agency's elimination of the sensitive-locations policy in January 2025 remains in effect, and no changes to that policy have been announced in connection with this case. The Diocese of Brownsville said it would provide additional information once available.

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