1. United States
2. Fla.
3. Letter

Is there only hate driving our country? Why was this EVER allowed anywhere. You are the responsible persons ICE agents arrested Sister Letty Ugboaja a block from her own church, handcuffed her in her habit, and took away her rosary as she walked to Sunday Mass in McAllen, Texas. Sister Letty is 56. She's a registered nurse who has spent more than a decade caring for patients in South Texas hospitals. On Sundays she serves communion at Our Lady of Sorrows. She lives one block from the church, and last Sunday morning she never made it there. The agents gave no explanation. They drove her an hour to a detention center in Raymondville. A fellow sister who reached her by phone in custody says she was terrified, didn't understand what was happening, and that agents refused to let her have the medication she needed. Her diocese says she is in this country legally. Here's how this becomes possible. For decades, government policy kept immigration agents away from churches, hospitals, and schools. Trump revoked those protections in his first days back in office. A nun in handcuffs on a Sunday sidewalk is not a glitch in the system. It is the system. McAllen didn't wait. A deacon texted the county judge, who worships at the same church. The judge called Congress. Within hours, lawmakers from both parties were blowing up the phones of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and border czar Tom Homan. That includes Monica De La Cruz, the Republican who represents the district. Trump carried 12 of the 14 Texas border counties in 2024. This is not resistance country. She posted it anyway, in public, on Facebook: "A Catholic nun on her way to church is not a threat to our community." By Sunday evening, DHS folded. Democrat Henry Cuellar announced the release order had been moved up a full day. She would sleep in her own bed that night. ICE has explained nothing since. Not why its agents stopped her. Not why they held her. Not one word to any reporter who has asked. The agency ignored every press question for days, then answered two congressmen's text messages in a single afternoon. The bishop of Brownsville called the protocols that let agents handcuff a religious sister on her way to church "wildly disturbing." And that night, Telemundo cameras were waiting as Sister Letty walked out through the detention center's metal gates, in tears, straight into the arms of Sister Norma Pimentel, the nun who had taken her call from custody a few hours before.