Olivia Andre, a 19-year-old woman from Congo who remains detained in ICE custody in Texas despite her family’s release in March, said she was “in shock” and overjoyed about a judge’s order for her release by Friday.
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“I couldn’t believe it. I started crying, shaking,” Andre said Thursday in her first interview since she learned about the judge’s order. She has been detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas for about six months. “I was so happy.”
On Wednesday, a federal district court in San Antonio ordered Andre’s release from the facility no later than Friday, according to court documents. The court found that Andre’s right to due process was violated and that her detention was unlawful. She will join her mother, brother, 16, and sister, 14, in Maine upon her release.
Andre said she quickly called her mother to tell her the news.
“I had a lot of emotion at the same time. I just remember telling her, ‘Mama, I’m coming home,’” Andre said, her bright smile beaming. Her mother was so overcome with emotion that she began to scream with joy. Soon, her sister heard the news and joined her.
But there were still fears the news could be too good to be true, Andre said. She called her mom late Wednesday to be sure nothing had changed, just in case.
“Part of me was worried, scared about being detained for a long, long time,” she said. “A lot of people have been waiting months and months.”
A federal appeals court has blocked the family’s deportation for now — a ruling that includes Andre — as it reviews their asylum case, a process that could take months or longer, said Elora Mukherjee, an attorney who represents the family.
Mukherjee, a Columbia Law School professor and the director of its Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, said Andre and her family should never have been detained. “It is unconscionable that ICE detained Olivia for six months and continues to detain her today,” she said.
“The federal court ordered Olivia’s release because the Trump administration had no lawful basis for detaining her,” she said. “She needlessly suffered in detention for six months in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protections. Her mental and physical health deteriorated during this time because she did not have access to sufficient clean drinking water, palatable food or appropriate medical care.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement that “the facts of this case have not changed; Olivia Mabiala Andre is an adult illegal alien with a final order of removal and no right to remain in the United States. Despite receiving full due process, this activist judge is releasing an illegal alien onto American streets.”
“Under President Trump, DHS will continue to fight for the removal of those who have no right to be in our country,” the spokesperson said, adding that if a migrant is found to have “no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period.”
Lawmakers, including Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, and children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel, had called for Andre’s release.
Andre and her family fled repression and torture in Congo and suffered the tragic death of her 8-year-old brother on their journey to America in 2022, according to court documents and their attorney.
The family filed for asylum as a unit after they came to the U.S. in December 2022, when Andre was a minor. She is still considered part of their asylum application, which is under review by a federal circuit court. In the months before their detention in November, the family’s asylum case and an appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals was denied, according to the family and DHS.
The denial led the family to seek refuge in Canada, instead. But because of an agreement between the U.S. and Canada, asylum-seekers and refugees are required to seek protection in the first “safe country” they arrive in. For Andre and her family, the Canadian government considered the U.S. to be that first safe country, and they were sent back. That was when federal immigration authorities arrived and detained Andre separately as an adult.
Andre’s mother and siblings were sent straight to the Dilley detention center, which has come under scrutiny over allegations of its treatment of children and families. Andre was moved between detention facilities for about two weeks before she was also sent to Dilley and kept in a separate section for single adults. They were reunited when Andre heard her younger sister shouting her name from the section where families are held.
More coverage of detainees at Dilley
The family were eventually allowed brief meetings with one another, until ICE granted a parole request for Andre’s mother and two siblings.
Carine Mbizi, Andre’s mother, said being released without her daughter has further traumatized her.
“I couldn’t think to get out of there and to leave one of my daughters behind me. I have already lost one of my children on our way to the United States. I never recovered from that, and I’m going through a lot of pain when I’m thinking about the fact that Olivia was left behind,” she said earlier in the Lingala language through an interpreter.
A DHS spokesperson previously said, “Carine Mbizi, the mother, and her minor children have been released from ICE custody pending their removal from the U.S.”
“DHS is working rapidly and overtime to remove these aliens from detention centers to their final destination — home,” the spokesperson said.
CoreCivic, the company that operates Dilley under a federal contract, said in a statement that it doesn’t enforce immigration laws, have any say in a person’s deportation or release or know the circumstances of people placed in its facilities.
Mbizi was a political dissident in Congo who participated in peaceful protests against the government and sought asylum in the U.S. after she was “brutally assaulted in retaliation for her political protests,” Mukherjee said. She was also witness to human rights abuses committed by the regime and, after she spoke out, was subjected to sexual violence and “torture that almost killed her,” Mukherjee said.
Andre said that at one point on their journey through South America, while they were crossing a river with strong currents, she saw her 8-year-old brother being swept away, according to a psychological assessment conducted by a licensed social worker and included in calls for her release. Andre said in the assessment that she has “recurring nightmares about watching him die and not being able to save him.”
The family later settled in Maine, which has a Congolese community, and her mother found work while she and her siblings went to school.
Andre graduated from high school a year and a half early and completed a program to become a certified nursing assistant, Mukherjee said. She was in her first year of college to become a nurse before ICE detained her.
When she found out she wouldn’t be going home with her mother and siblings in March, Andre said, she tried to be strong.
But the next day, “I cried a lot. I screamed a lot,” Andre said last month. The brief visits with her family that had kept her going were now gone. “I just started feeling an empty space in my heart again, the same pain that I felt when I lost my little brother.”
Andre said Thursday that what will stay with her the most from her six months at Dilley was the importance of her family.
“After here, I’ll have to spend more and more time with them. Because we never know what kind of thing can happen,” she said. “I never imagined that I would be here, so far from them.”
She said that when she called to tell a friend about her release, all of her friends had already heard the news. They all plan to meet her at the airport and throw her the graduation party that she was unable to have because of her time in detention.
She said the first things she wanted to do upon her release were to hug her mom and siblings again, see her friends and have something she has long been craving — mango juice.
“So I can have that feeling to have my own choice again, to have something I wanted to have,” she said.
Andre said she can’t wait to see her friends and go to her favorite spots in Maine, look at the trees and be by the beach.
“I want to be in front of the water and maybe scream, ‘I have freedom,’” she said.