After nearly four months in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in El Paso while in need of surgery for an ovarian cyst, a 23-year-old Minnesota woman originally from Guatemala has been released.
Andrea Pedro Francisco said ICE officials told her Wednesday that she would be freed, then released her later that day.
“It was a shock, it surprised me greatly. I was finishing eating when they told me I had to have a meeting. Suddenly, ICE told me that today I was going to be released, and I asked them, ‘Why, where am I going?’ They told me I was going home,” she said in a statement provided to El Paso Matters on Thursday by her attorney, Ruby Powers of Houston. “And I was just stunned because I truly did not know that yesterday I was going to be released. I didn’t know what to do. I thought it was like a joke because I wasn’t expecting it…