Chellie Pingree

Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, D-1st District, visited a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas on Tuesday to advocate for its closure and the release of a Portland teen being held there.

Pingree and several House Democrats from Arizona, California and Texas visited the Dilley Immigration Processing Center where Olivia Mabiala Andre, 19, of Portland, and other detainees are being held.

“There was nothing about the conditions that were humane and it is done with our tax dollars and in our name and it has to stop,” Pingree said at a news conference in Texas following the visit.

The lawmakers called for the facility’s closure. Multiple people at the press conference described the conditions as “horrific,” from the separation of families to a lack of medical services.

They also took issue with children being treated as prisoners and receiving inadequate educational services. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, said nearly 400 people are being held at the facility in Dilley, including 93 children.

Pingree focused much of her time at the podium on Olivia Andre, whom she was able to meet with for about an hour.

“She’s been waiting two months to get her eyes checked because she has chronic headaches,” Pingree said. “She has mental health issues, she doesn’t like the food, she feels lonely and isolated and very much separated from her family.”

Olivia Andre, her mother, Carine Balenda Mbizi, and two siblings, Joel and Estefania Andre, sought asylum in Canada but were denied and returned to the Champlain, New York, port of entry on Nov. 12 and taken into custody, according to U.S. Border & Customs Protection.

According to Border Patrol, the family entered the United States illegally in 2022 and a judge ordered their removal in February 2025. They appealed that order, but were denied in October.

The Portland family, originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was eventually transferred to the facility in Texas, though Olivia Andre was kept in a separate part from her family members.

Olivia Andre’s mother and siblings were released and returned to Maine in March. Ahead of their release, attorneys had argued that the mother and two high schoolers must be released from custody under the Flores Settlement Agreement. That agreement details several protections for people under 18 who have been detained by immigration authorities.

But attorneys are still working to secure the 19-year-old’s release.

The family’s detainment received widespread attention as Joel Andre is a prominent member of Portland’s soccer community and both he and Estefania were attending Portland schools. Within two weeks of their arrest, hundreds of Portland students demonstrated against ICE in front of City Hall.

Following the release of the mother and siblings, advocates have focused on securing Olivia Andre’s release and reuiniting the family.

Maine children’s YouTube star Rachel Griffin Accurso, popularly known as Ms. Rachel, has also called for Olivia Andre’s release, drawing national attention to her case.

Pingree touched on the family’s perilous journey to the United States at the news conference Tuesday.

“They wandered their way down through Brazil, came all the way up,” she said. “She lost her 8-year-old brother in the crossing. He was drowned on the way.”

Pingree also noted some of the children’s accomplishments and their role in the community.

“Olivia herself graduated from high school a year and a half early,” Pingree said. “She became fluent in English very young, she’s already gotten her CNA and she’d started out in nursing home school.”

The congresswoman also read aloud a letter Olivia Andre wrote to her, part of which said, “I still hold on to one thing: home. For me, home is Maine, especially Portland. Maine is where I felt safe for the first time in a long time. I want to feel safe again. I want to feel like I matter. I want to feel like I’m not alone.”

Pingree said she, the family’s lawyers and many other advocates are “going to continue to do everything we can” to secure Olivia Andre’s release.

“But we all know, when we get her home, that’s just one of so many young people who are locked up in facilities like this who don’t belong there, and we’re spending our tax dollars to do it,” Pingree concluded.