ICE Refuses Medical Release for Minnesota Woman Detained with Painful Ovarian Cyst

Andrea Pedro-Francisco, a young woman from Minnesota detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), faces a grim reality: ICE has denied her request for humanitarian parole to undergo urgent surgery for a painful ovarian cyst that could cause serious complications.

Pedro-Francisco, 23, was arrested on February 5 during Operation Metro Surge in Burnsville, Minnesota, while on her way to work cleaning houses. She was detained despite having no criminal record and no arrest warrant. She entered the United States legally in 2019 as a teenager seeking asylum with her mother. At the time of her arrest, she was scheduled for surgery to remove the cyst.

Instead of receiving proper medical care, Pedro-Francisco was quickly transferred to the overcrowded Camp East Montana detention center near El Paso, Texas, notorious for outbreaks of measles, tuberculosis, and COVID-19. She was later moved to the El Paso Processing Center. Though prescribed opioids for her pain in Minnesota, in detention she has only been given over-the-counter medications like Tylenol and ibuprofen.

Her lawyer filed a lawsuit challenging her detention, but a federal judge in Texas rejected it. The humanitarian parole request was a last-ditch effort to secure the medical care she desperately needs.

Democratic Representative Angie Craig, who has taken up Pedro-Francisco’s cause, visited her in detention and called ICE’s denial “beyond disappointing – it’s sickening.” Craig bluntly called this the work of “Donald Trump’s ICE” and vowed the fight for Pedro-Francisco’s release is far from over.

ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have defended their handling of medical care in detention. DHS spokesperson Leticia Zamarripa claimed Pedro-Francisco has been seen multiple times by medical staff and even taken to an emergency room where the cyst was confirmed. DHS insists it provides “the best healthcare that many individuals have received in their lives.”

But immigration attorneys and human rights advocates call this a cruel fiction. They accuse ICE of deliberately withholding adequate medical treatment to pressure detainees into voluntary deportation — a tactic documented in other cases, including a Minnesota man who agreed to return to Mexico to access diabetes medication.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, more than 45 people have died in ICE custody, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The ongoing pattern of neglect and abuse in detention centers continues to cost lives.

Pedro-Francisco’s attorney Ruby Powers called ICE’s claim “offensive and irrelevant” and vowed to pursue all legal avenues to force ICE to reconsider and provide the surgery Pedro-Francisco needs.

This case is yet another glaring example of the Trump administration’s ICE using detention as a tool of cruelty rather than justice — putting vulnerable people’s lives at risk instead of protecting their rights and health. We will keep tracking this story and others like it until accountability is forced.