Texas Judge Keeps Woman With Ruptured Cyst Risk in ICE Detention Hell

Andrea Pedro-Francisco was one week away from surgery when ICE agents grabbed her in Burnsville, Minnesota on February 5. She was heading to work cleaning houses. She had no warrant for her arrest. She had no criminal record. What she did have was a large ovarian cyst that could rupture at any moment, threatening the loss of her ovary and causing excruciating pain.

None of that mattered to the Trump administration's deportation machine. Pedro-Francisco, who entered the United States at 16 in 2019, was swept up in Operation Metro Surge and shipped 1,500 miles south to Texas -- far from her scheduled surgery, far from any judge who might actually care about her constitutional rights.

A Judge Who Won't Even Say Her Name

U.S. District Judge Leon Schydlower, a Biden appointee, denied Pedro-Francisco's habeas corpus petition for release in early April. His order was nearly identical to dozens of others he issued around the same time -- part of more than 300 similar petitions flooding his court as the Trump administration transfers detainees to Texas to avoid accountability.

"This is deeply disappointing, not just because the stakes were so high but we're disappointed that she never got an individualized assessment," said Asra Syed, Pedro-Francisco's attorney at Austin law firm Botkin Chiarello Calaf. "He doesn't even say her name."

The judge's ruling relied on a recent 5th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that endorses the Trump administration's radical reinterpretation of a 1996 immigration law. The administration now claims it can hold undocumented immigrants indefinitely without bond during deportation proceedings -- even people who were paroled into the country after seeking asylum and have lived here for years.

That interpretation breaks with three decades of practice. Federal judges across the country, including Trump appointees, have rejected it. But the 5th Circuit -- covering Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi -- gave it a green light. So did the 8th Circuit, which covers Minnesota. The issue is headed to the Supreme Court, but Pedro-Francisco is suffering now.

Forum Shopping for Compliant Courts

Pedro-Francisco's case exposes a deliberate strategy: transfer detainees out of jurisdictions where judges actually enforce the law, and dump them in places where the courts will rubber-stamp whatever ICE wants.

Had Pedro-Francisco stayed in Minnesota, she would likely be home and recovered from surgery by now. Federal judges there have repeatedly defied the Trump administration's mass detention policies and ordered immigrants released when ICE violates their rights.

Instead, she landed before a Texas judge who gave the federal government more than three weeks to respond to her petition instead of the standard three days. That delay kept her locked up in one of the worst detention facilities in the country.

Worms in the Food, Three Deaths in Six Weeks

While her case crawled through the courts, Pedro-Francisco was held at Camp East Montana in El Paso -- a tent facility erected last summer on the site of a former World War II detention center for Japanese Americans. The historical irony is not subtle.

Detainees report finding worms in their food. The roof leaks when it rains. Medical care is virtually nonexistent. Three people died there in a six-week period, including a man who was suffocated during a struggle with multiple guards.

Conditions got so bad that ICE recently terminated its $1.3 billion contract with Acquisition Logistics, the company running the facility. Acquisition Logistics had never operated an ICE detention center before landing this massive contract.

Pedro-Francisco said she was examined by a man who conducted an ultrasound but refused to tell her his name. She has since been moved to the El Paso Processing Center, but her lawyer says she is still only receiving Tylenol and ibuprofen -- along with birth control and an antidepressant -- despite being prescribed oxycodone by her doctor in Minnesota.

Congress Can't Help Either

U.S. Rep. Angie Craig tried to use her position in Congress to pressure ICE into getting Pedro-Francisco evaluated and treated by a specialist. It didn't work.

"Andrea's treatment in ICE custody is unacceptable and beyond the pale," Craig said in a statement. "I will not stop working to protect Andrea's rights and get her the critical health care she needs."

But ICE has another solution for detainees like Pedro-Francisco: self-deport. Give up your right to a hearing, abandon any asylum claim, and we'll let you out. It's a choice between indefinite detention in a disease-ridden tent or voluntary exile from the country where you've built your life.

So far, Pedro-Francisco has refused.

The System Working Exactly as Designed

Pedro-Francisco's case is not an aberration. It's the system working exactly as the Trump administration designed it. Arrest immigrants without warrants. Transfer them far from home and legal support. Dump them in jurisdictions with compliant judges. Hold them in facilities so brutal that self-deportation looks like mercy.

The administration calls this "law and order." What it actually is: a deliberate strategy to circumvent due process, inflict maximum suffering, and make the legal system irrelevant through sheer cruelty and logistical chaos.

Pedro-Francisco had no final order for removal. She had no criminal record. She was a 16-year-old when she arrived in the United States. She was one week from surgery when ICE grabbed her.

None of that mattered because none of it was supposed to matter. The point is the cruelty. The point is making an example. The point is ensuring that immigrants know there is no judge who will protect them, no law that will save them, no amount of suffering that will be considered too much.

A federal judge in Texas just made that point crystal clear.