On June 28, Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja, a Catholic nun from Nigeria, left her home and took the short one-block walk to her church in McAllen, Texas. It was supposed to be unusual: wearing her white habit and carrying a rosary, Sister Letty was going to Sunday morning mass at Our Lady of Sorrows.
Failed – US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped, arrestedand he is tied in handcuffs aged 56. They took him into custody for an hour, and it is said that they took away his rosary, and refused to bring him the medicines he is taking. He called his diocese for help — and as word spread, Republicans and Democrats appealed directly to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin for an explanation. Hours later, he was released – without explanation.
Many questions about this event remain. According to her diocese, Sister Letty had worked as a registered nurse in the area for about a decade and entered the country legally.
But the incident is not a one-off – and is instead representative of a trend affecting the United States over the past year. Although ICE and President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement activities have receded from national headlines, Sister Letty’s detention shows how two forces are at war in Trump’s second term: the push for tougher immigration enforcement and the constitutional imperative to preserve religious freedom and free exercise in America.
Strengthening federal immigration enforcement around religious spaces and believers
The final year of Trump’s mass deportation program has produced many cases like Sister Letty’s — even if they haven’t made national news. Federal immigration agents have detained and harassed Catholic, Protestant and Muslim clergy and laity, instilling fear in all denominations — especially as Religious and community leaders planned and led the response for the war against immigrants across the country.
Both the Departments of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sister Letty’s case, or other religious freedom issues. They have also not responded to requests for comments to other local and national agencies in the case of Sister Letty.
In November, the Bishop of Texas reported that a Kenyan priest working for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice he had been detained by ICE when he left work and was transferred to a detention center. His diocesan officials said he was working in the United States legally, and had the right documents to be in the United States. In July 2025, the chaplain of an Islamic hospital in Ohio he was arrested and detained during an immigration inspection. An Egyptian immigrant, he was detained for several weeks before being released. And earlier this year, Catholic Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago reported that priests in his archdiocese have been stopped by federal agents and ordered prove their citizenship. That’s all about the priests who were shot with pepper balls or sprayed with tear gas at anti-ICE protests in Illinois and California.
Yet this conflict has manifested itself not only through the abuse of priests and those committed to religious life, but also in restrictions on how those in custody receive pastoral care, how those who attempt to provide that care are allowed to work, and whether places of worship can exist without a federal presence.
For yearsEnforcement of federal immigration laws was limited by “sensitive area” laws designed to protect places like hospitals, schools and churches from unnecessary threats. Those guidelines were the first formalized during the Obama administration, established by the first Trump administration, and reaffirmed during the Biden presidency. Nor were these restrictions entirely new: Some form of protection of houses of worship existed more than 30 yearsaccording to the legal organization Democracy Forward.
But DHS deleted “sensitive area” laws at the start of Trump’s second presidency – “enabling” CBP and ICE to go after “criminals” who will “no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” according to DHS statement at the time – eliciting legal responses from immigrant rights and religious freedom groups.
“For decades, the federal government recognized a simple truth: targeting people at houses of worship violates religious freedom and harms communities,” Bradley Girard, senior counsel for Democracy Forward, said earlier this year. to announce amicus briefs in federal cases brought by a coalition of Quaker, Sikh, and Baptist groups. “This brief makes clear that the Trump-Vance administration’s policy is not only illegal — it’s dangerous. It curtails religious practice and undermines public safety by driving people into the shadows.”
Most of those suits ended succeed – at least in getting judges to protect the various places of worship of Baptists, Lutherans, Christians, and Sikhs that could prove that they were affected by the invasion of immigrants. But broad federal protections for places of worship have yet to be formalized.
Instead, churches, religious organizations, and legal aid organizations have fought legal battles to secure religious freedom protections, such as in Minnesota and Illinois — especially to exercise pastoral care, such as providing counseling, sacraments, and religious practices. In Minneapolis, for example, Groundwork Legal, a local nonprofit, public interest law firm, sued ICE for banning clergy from accessing the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building.
“Under federal law – the Constitution and the law – it is clear that the government can only limit a person’s ability to exercise their religious beliefs, including the ability to provide (or receive) pastoral care, in the most unrestricted ways possible given the circumstances,” Irina Vaynerman, co-founder and general counsel of Groundwork Legal, told me. “And here, the categorical restriction from even entering the building, to providing that care to anyone who wants to receive it, was clearly not the least restrictive way.”
Groundwork filed the lawsuit in February on behalf of religious organizations and denominational leaders under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment’s free exercise protections. They won a preliminary injunction in March, with a judge ordering the federal government to allow religious leaders to provide pastoral care to those detained by ICE at the building.
Catholic priests and religious leaders launched a similar suit last fall in Illinois after ICE and CBP officials denied chaplains access to the Broadview federal facility to serve detainees — including giving Communion to them. They won a partial victory this year, when a judge ordered federal agents to allow priests to attend Ash Wednesday services — and in May, ICE and religious leaders. reach an agreement allowing for daily visits once again while the case continues.
Vaynerman told me again that the Illinois case is still ongoing — these agreements and changes are a temporary relief, in part because no national protections or guarantees have been formalized beyond the side battles over religious freedom and free exercise in specific cities and around specific federal buildings or places of worship.
“This is certainly something that we know people are going through all over the country…and we know that this is happening all over the country because there are no common protocols or policies related to this very important constitutional and legal right,” he said. “It is very important that the government recognizes (the importance of pastoral care) and then provides that level of access that is constitutionally required to help people who are going through one of the worst times in their lives.”
