DAKOTA COUNTY TRIBUNE: Burnsville woman’s ICE detention called ‘a life or death situation’
A 23-year-old Burnsville woman scheduled to have an ovarian cyst removed on Feb. 11 is in ICE custody in Texas, her condition worsening by the day, advocates said.
Andrea Pedro-Francisco’s Feb. 5 arrest interrupted her medical care and pain treatment, and efforts to gain her release have been fruitless, U.S. Rep. Angie Craig said on Monday.
“I am not exaggerating when I say that this is a life or death situation. ... I am not going to stand by while a constituent faces the potential consequences of dying,” the 2nd District Democrat said at a sidewalk news conference on Highland Drive in Burnsville, near where Pedro-Francisco attends church and was arrested while going to work.
Asra Syed, an El Paso, Texas, attorney working to return Pedro-Francisco home while her immigration case is pending and get her proper medical care in detention, said a federal judge in Texas has closed her case.
Syed said her habeas corpus petition and requests for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction ensuring prescribed medications are given and Pedro-Francisco is examined by an independent doctor have been rejected.
The remaining hope is getting Pedro-Francisco released on humanitarian grounds by the field office director at the El Paso Service Processing Center, where she’s being held, Syed said.
“She missed her family here in Burnsville,” Syed said, recounting a video meeting with her client. “She cried when talking about being in detention for one of their birthdays. She missed singing and playing music at church, which she attended four or five days a week, so devoted to her faith and her tight-knit community that she’s on a path to becoming a deacon.”
Instead, Pedro-Francisco has suffered from severe pain that makes sleep difficult, hot flashes and shivers, waves of faintness, inedible food and racist abuse, Syed said.
Her cyst has grown to nearly the size of a tennis ball, and her doctor in Minnesota says it’s at risk of rupturing or cutting off her blood supply, which could cause fatal internal bleeding, infection or the loss of her ovaries, Syed said.
Before her arrest Pedro-Francisco was prescribed opioids for her pain; in detention she’s been offered only Tylenol and Advil, Syed said.
“There are studies that show that the vast majority of deaths in ICE custody could have been prevented with adequate medical care,” Syed said, noting that ICE has reported 46 detention deaths since the start of the second Trump administration. “We’re talking about people with treatable conditions — infections, diabetic crises — who were denied care until it’s too late. It’s not too late for Andrea yet.”
Pedro-Francisco came to the U.S. from Guatemala in 2019 with her mother, who sought asylum, Craig said. Pedro-Francisco has no criminal record, “and as her friends will tell you, she’s become an integral part of the Burnsville community.”
She attends church at Iglesia Misión Elim, which meets at Open Circle Church on Highland Drive. Pedro-Francisco sings in the church chorus and plays guitar.
She was heading to work on Feb. 5 when she was pulled over by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the “reckless and lawless” Operation Metro Surge, Craig said.
“We can only imagine it was some combination of the color of her skin, the sound of her name,” Craig said. “We know that ICE is racially profiling here in Minnesota, because we have seen it with our own eyes and even in many of our own families.”
Pedro-Francisco was sent to Camp East Montana, an ICE detention facility in El Paso “notorious for its horror stories of detainees being denied access to basic needs and even actively abused by ICE offices,” Craig said.
Shortly after arriving at Camp East Montana, Pedro-Francisco suffered excruciating pain and was taken to a hospital emergency room, Syed said. The doctor who treated her confirmed she needed surgery, but said he didn’t want to perform it while she was detained, Syed said.
Craig said her office has tried for more than a month to get information on Pedro-Francisco’s condition.
“We’ve been ignored, put off, and frankly lied to about the treatment she’s received while in detention,” she said.
Pedro-Francisco has not been granted a medical hearing, Craig said.
“She needs surgery. She needs to be released from ICE in order to receive the treatment that she needs. The goal is seeming further and further out of reach today,” she said.
Craig said she and aides plan to go to El Paso to see Pedro-Francisco. “And candidly, we’ll see if they let me in,” she said.
Pedro-Francisco and others like her are “collateral damage” from Operation Metro Surge, Craig said. Her office is working on about 20 detention cases, four involving severe medical issues, she said. Another medical case ended when a person needing dialysis self-deported, she said.
Alise Bifulk, a volunteer with advocacy group Haven Watch, read a statement from Pedro-Francisco’s mother.
“She’s a kind person with a beautiful heart,” it read. “Andrea helps me with my expenses and with her two younger siblings. I can’t work right now because my children are with me and there’s no one to care for them, and they miss their sister so much.”