Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree said she’ll visit an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Texas this week in an effort to assist 19-year-old Olivia Andre, an asylum-seeker from Portland who’s been detained there since November.
Pingree made the announcement at the Maine Democratic Party’s convention in Portland on Saturday.
“So next week, I will travel to Texas to see if we can get Olivia Andre released,” Pingree said.
Andre and her family were detained by border agents in New York after they tried to seek asylum in Canada. Her mother and two younger siblings were released in March.
In an email, an ICE spokesperson said Andre is an “illegal alien with a final order of removal and no right to remain in the U.S.” She’s currently being detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.