Kidney transplant recipient is back home in Minnesota after two weeks in ICE custody
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A kidney transplant recipient who spent nearly two weeks in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Texas without access to his life-saving medications is finally back home in Minnesota. Javier Abreu-Vasquez arrived at the Rochester International Airport Thursday evening and was reunited with his family.
Even after his medical team at Mayo Clinic and legal team intervened with the Texas detention facility, his attorney says federal agents continued to give Abreu-Vasquez, 38, incorrect dosages of the medications he needs to keep his body from rejecting the donated kidney.
His wife Carolina Rosario de Abreu, his mother Melania and his two daughters Laura, 12, and Zemaiah, 6, welcomed Abreu-Vasquez at the airport. Abreu-Vasquez hugged his family. When asked how it feels to be back with his family, he answered while tearing up.
“Good, because they are the best part of my life,” Abreu Vasquez said in Spanish as his friend interpreted.
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When asked how he feels about being home, Abreu-Vasquez said that he is “happy for now, but I have the ankle monitor, and so they told me I can't go out, I can't drive around, and so that limits my movements.”
Asked what the experience of being held in ICE custody was like, Abeu-Vasquez said he “would not like to talk about that right now. It was not something good to see.”
Abreu-Vasquez was arrested Feb. 5 in Rochester and taken into custody without his life-saving medications. His family rushed the medications to him before he was flown to a detention center in Texas, but his wife and his attorney told MPR News that he wasn’t given the medications often.
“I think he maybe received a 90 percent version of it one day,” said David Wilson, managing attorney at Wilson Law Group. The rest of the time, it was all over the place. And so there would be days where [he] would only get one [pill] out of five, or the timing was off. There was no rhythm to what was happening.”
The Department of Homeland Security sent a statement to MPR News multiple times saying that ICE is aware of Abreu-Vasquez’s recent kidney transplant, that the family gave authorities the medications and that ICE was working to ensure he gets them.
However, his wife, Rosaria de Abreu, and Wilson told MPR News that he was never given the correct doses at the correct items.
On Feb. 9, a Mayo Clinic physician wrote another letter to ICE on behalf of its patient. MPR News obtained the letter from Wilson and agreed to not disclose its author.
“Mr. Abreu received a kidney transplant in 2023 and, as a transplant recipient, requires strict adherence to a complex immunosuppressive medication regimen to maintain the health of the donated kidney. Interruptions or delays in these medications place him at significant risk for acute rejection, which can rapidly progress to organ failure, necessitating dialysis and potentially resulting in life-threatening complications,” the letter stated.
The physician went on to request a “direct physician-to-physician consultation” and urged federal authorities to give “prompt attention to this urgent medical matter.”
Wilson said ICE did not respond to this or other follow up messages from the medical team beyond confirming receipt.
“Javier’s experience is essentially reflective of the inability of an organization to manage medical care when it's moving so fast,” Wilson said. “It's not taking time to really understand anything about the people they're detaining. They're just a number, and their medical needs are kind of irrelevant until they don't have a choice to deal with it because the person is now on the floor and may need to go to the hospital. That's when they seem to start paying attention.”
Abreu-Vasquez was arrested by immigration agents in Rochester while he was delivering groceries as part of a local mutual aid group organized through his church. He was taken without his medications to the Whipple Federal Building near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that day and flown to the ICE detention facility in El Paso the next day.
Abreu-Vasquez is from the Dominican Republic and entered the United States legally on a visa, according to Wilson, and he had been working through the process to remain in the country legally when that visa expired. At a hearing Feb. 13, an immigration judge set Abreu’s bond at $12,000.
There was a team effort to bring Abreu-Vasquez home.
Raul Aldrete, executive director of the Rochester-based charity We The Gente, said he connected Abreu-Vasquez’s wife with his legal representation and then covered the initial $2,000 bond hearing fee to ensure things could move forward immediately. It also worked with Southeastern Minnesota Interfaith Immigrant Legal Defense (SMIILD) and its fiscal sponsor, the Rochester Area Foundation, which paid for the $12,000 bond and reimbursed We The Gente for the $2,000 bond hearing fee.
After Abreu-Vasquez was released from the ICE detention center in El Paso Wednesday, We The Gente arranged his ride to the airport and worked with the nonprofit Stand With Minnesota for his flight home — which was paid for by a community member’s donated airline miles.
Now that Abreu-Vasquez is back in Minnesota, Wilson said they can begin to figure out together how to complete the process for him to become a legal U.S. resident and prevent his deportation. Wilson said Mayo Clinic will be expecting a very prompt follow up visit with its patient to stabilize his condition.
Correction (Feb. 20, 2026): A previous version of this story misspelled Javier Abreu-Vasquez and Raul Aldrete’s names. It has been corrected. The story also misstated the role a local El Paso nonprofit played in helping Abreu-Vasqeuz; it has been clarified.
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