Minnesota Woman With Medical Emergency Fights for Treatment in Texas Detention

A Life-Threatening Condition Left Untreated

A cyst on Andrea Pedro-Francisco's ovary has swelled to nearly the size of a tennis ball and is now at risk of rupturing or cutting off blood supply. The pain is so severe that her doctor prescribed her an opioid. Yet she's only received Tylenol or ibuprofen for the pain since she was arrested on her way to work on Feb. 5 in Minnesota and shipped to a Texas detention center, where she's waiting for a judge to decide whether her detention is even legal.

"I want to be able to go back to my family," Pedro-Francisco, 23, said in Spanish in a video interview, wearing a navy blue sweatshirt and looking ashen. "I feel sad. I feel tired. I feel desperate to get out of here and see my family again." The pain in her abdomen became so unbearable that within a couple days she was taken to a hospital, where she says a doctor confirmed the cyst yet declined to operate on her because she's in immigration custody.

"We are very worried she could have an infection right now … and the Trump administration won't do a damn thing about it," Craig said in an interview. "I don't want Andrea to die." Democratic U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, who represents the Twin Cities suburbs where Pedro-Francisco lives, sent inquiries to Homeland Security officials hoping to pressure them to provide adequate medical treatment. Craig says she's been stonewalled with demands for various forms and out-of-office messages citing the partial government shutdown.

From Minnesota Streets to Texas Detention

Pedro-Francisco was driving to work with her mother and a neighbor one Thursday morning when they were stopped by two unmarked vehicles. One parked in front and the other behind. Half a dozen masked men surrounded them, demanding to see their documents, she said. She said she doesn't know why they stopped her. There was no warrant for her arrest.

Pedro-Francisco is one of 4,000 immigrants the Trump administration says it arrested during Operation Metro Surge — although it has not provided an accounting of all those arrests — with some 3,000 federal agents descending on Minnesota for what the Department of Homeland Security called its largest operation ever. By swiftly transferring Pedro-Francisco to Texas, ICE has made it harder for her and other people arrested in Minnesota to challenge their detention through what's called a habeas corpus petition. That seems to be by design.

Approximately 200 people detained in Minnesota have been transferred out-of-state and remain in detention centers across the country — in Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Nebraska and Mississippi — according to Sarah Brenes, executive director of the Binger Center at the University of Minnesota Law School and one of the directors of the Minnesota Habeas Project.

A System Under Legal Challenge

Minnesota U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank wrote that he's seen a "pattern of obfuscation" with ICE "attempting to hide the location of detainees, and thus, make habeas proceedings more difficult." Many have been ordered released by federal judges who ruled their detentions unlawful. But many others remain languishing in federal facilities across the country even if, like Pedro-Francisco, they have no criminal record and have lived in the United States for years.

Instead of medical care, ICE has offered her another solution: self-deport. Every two or three days, she says, ICE officials enter their room to ask people to sign forms agreeing to voluntary removal. Many have taken it, including a man from Minnesota whose lawyer said he only agreed because he was being denied medication for his diabetes.

Fighting for Survival and Family

The calls to 911 poured in from staff at Camp East Montana in Texas, the nation's largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, at a rate of nearly one a day for five months, each its own tale of pain and despair. This is where many Minnesota detainees have been sent, including Pedro-Francisco initially before her transfer to another facility.

Syed filed a habeas corpus petition to challenge Pedro-Francisco's detention on Feb. 13 and mentioned her urgent need for medical attention. As the weeks have passed, she can feel herself getting sicker. Here in the midst of suffering, pain and illness, my purpose is to be able to return to my family ...

Pedro-Francisco's case highlights the broader challenges facing immigration detention, where medical care often becomes secondary to enforcement priorities. Her story represents hundreds of others caught in a system where distance from family and legal representation can mean the difference between receiving treatment and suffering in silence.