Texas Tribune
by Lomi Kriel, The Texas TribuneJune 4, 2026
A 23-year-old Guatemalan woman in immigration detention, who has been denied surgery for a painful ovarian cyst for four months, was released earlier this week, her lawyers said.
Andrea Pedro Francisco crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 2019 with her mother seeking asylum and had been living in Minnesota ever since. In February, days before doctors scheduled her for an urgent surgery to remove an ovarian cyst about the size of a lime, federal agents detained Pedro Francisco and her mother in Minnesota as part of the Trump administration’s controversial Operation Metro Surge.
That initiative, the administration’s most recent high-profile immigration operation, resulted in the detention of about 3,400 immigrants from Minnesota who were sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement centers in Texas.
Pedro Francisco, a leader and musician in her Minnesota evangelical church, was transferred to El Paso’s controversial Camp East Montana, a sprawling tent camp at the city’s U.S. Army’s Fort Bliss. Her arrest came six days before she was scheduled for surgery for her ovarian cyst in Minnesota after years of increasing pain, according to her family and medical records.
Two days after arriving at Camp East Montana, ICE staff called 911, records show, and rushed Pedro Francisco to the hospital for what she said was her debilitating condition. Ever since then, her health has deteriorated, she and her lawyers said. But ICE officials and a federal judge have repeatedly denied her release or outside OB GYN- specialists.
In a statement, Pedro Francisco said that she was in “shock” at what she called her sudden release. She said that she was eating earlier this week when an ICE official told her that she was going to be freed.
“They told me that I was going home,” she recalled, adding that she was “stunned,” and thought it was a “joke.” She said that she is excited to see her family, especially her two younger siblings who she helped raise, and to play musical instruments again.
Her attorney, Ruby L. Powers, called her release “nothing short of a miracle,” adding that now that Pedro Francisco is going home, “she will finally obtain the care she needs and deserves.”
But, Powers added, “we know that there are many others suffering in detention, away from family and being neglected medical treatment. Today, this outcome renews faith in humanity and in what is possible.”
Pedro Francisco’s other attorney, Asra Syed, said that her release “took so many people – her lawyers, her legislators, her friends, her family, organizers – working together.”
Nine experts who reviewed more than 200 pages of her medical records, obtained by The Texas Tribune with Pedro Francisco’s consent, agreed that she urgently requires surgery and not doing so could result in her inability to have children. At worst, some experts argued that it could even result in her death if her cyst is cancerous. The experts said that her treatment in ICE detention amounts to potential medical malpractice because it fails to provide the industry’s standard of care and contradicts what external doctors recommend.
Dr. William Weber, who practices emergency medicine in Minnesota and also reviewed Pedro Francisco’s records, said on Thursday that he is grateful Pedro Francisco could finally get the care she needs now that she is freed.
“Unfortunately, there are many more in ICE detention with unmet medical needs and we need systemic changes,” said Weber, who helps lead the Medical Justice Alliance, a nonprofit focused on care in detention facilities.
Spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond to questions.
Previously, Leticia Zamarripa, a spokesperson for ICE, said in a statement that medical staff determined Pedro Francisco’s condition “does not make her a candidate for surgical intervention.”
“This is the best healthcare that many individuals have received in their lives,” Zamarripa argued.
An unnamed Department of Homeland Security spokesperson added in an email that Pedro Francisco had seen onsite medical staff while in ICE detention and been evaluated at a local behavioral health center, in addition to the ER visit. The official declined to answer detailed questions.
As Trump has ramped up deportation efforts, Pedro Francisco was one of more than 60,000 people in ICE detention as the administration continues to pursue mass ICE warehouses in its push for expanded removals. Like her, the majority were arrested in the interior of the country and have no criminal convictions. At least 18 people have died in ICE custody this year, nearly a third of them in Texas. That record-breaking number is on pace to surpass the nearly three dozen deaths in 2025, which were the most ICE fatalities in more than two decades.
Experts say this is the result of the administration’s push to detain a far greater number of immigrants than some ICE facilities have capacity for while contracting with companies that either have problematic records or little experience in detention management. At the same time, many medical providers which work with ICE have been unpaid since the fall in a bureaucratic change made by the administration as it switched billing methods.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other Texas advocacy groups sued the administration last month about its treatment of immigrants at Camp East Montana, where Pedro Francisco was held for a few months. Before she arrived, the facility had seen at least three detainee deaths, including a homicide involving staff. Compounding the problems there was a nearly monthlong measles outbreak and nearly 50 detention standards violations as reported by ICE’s own inspectors, prompting calls for the camp’s closure from immigrant advocates and Democratic lawmakers.
The suit last week argued that conditions at the facility are “unconstitutional punishment,” violating detainees’ due process rights, and that the negligent conditions are “longstanding, pervasive, and well documented.”
Help us report on Texas ICE detention
The Texas Tribune is continuing to report on the record deaths in the state’s immigrant detention facilities and the conditions inside. We’re seeking people who can speak about the quality of care at ICE’s two dozen centers in Texas, including El Paso’s Camp East Montana and the Dilley facility for parents and children, as well as anyone who can provide information on the new detention warehouses slated to open in Dallas, El Paso, San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley.
We take your confidentiality seriously and will protect your identity.
Among the people we would like to hear from are:
Immigrants and their relatives who have been held at Texas ICE detention centers and who can speak to the quality of care and treatment by staff there in the past decade. .
Family and attorneys of those who died either in Texas ICE custody or shortly after being released or deported, or those who experienced medical harm during or as a result of detention.
Current or former ICE employees and contractors, such as medical staff and safety inspectors, as well as emergency officials and health care workers who have treated ICE detainees.
You can contact us anonymously on Signal, an encrypted, secure app, or on Whatsapp, via phone or through email:
Lomi Kriel (se habla español): 832-729-3421 (Signal, Whatsapp, cell) or lkriel@texastribune.org
Colleen DeGuzman: 956-605-9321 (Signal, Whatsapp, cell) or colleen.deguzman@texastribune.org
Mail us: Lomi Kriel and Colleen DeGuzman, The Texas Tribune, 919 Congress Ave, STE 600, Austin, TX 78701.
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A photo of Abel Tarin, who was shot and killed after being carjacked and kidnapped.
