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A Cary pastor who suffered a medical emergency while detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been released and will be going to rehabilitation, according to his daughter.
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Gabri Johnson, 30, said her father, Gabriel Johnson III, a 55-year-old Cary pastor, was released from ICE custody on Wednesday evening and would be transitioning to a 24-hour rehabilitation center for medical treatment.
“He’s just so excited to be allowed to go to therapy. A big fear of his was having his body not fully work and be sent to a country he’s never been to before without his family. So that just took such a huge toll, and now, for the time being, that is not a threat,” Gabri told The News & Observer on Saturday, while driving to the Dallas hospital with her mother to visit Johnson.
Johnson is still at a Dallas hospital and will likely be moved to the rehabilitation facility within three days, pending administrative matters like insurance verification, Gabri said. The N&O reached out to ICE on Saturday but has not received a response.
Gabri said doctors initially believed that her father had had a stroke, but brain scans showed that he had an acute neurological event, which has led to partial paralysis on the whole left side of his body, preventing him from moving his left arm or leg and more issues.
“It’s (rehab) something to look forward to for him. So that’s just been taken off of our shoulders, and we’re so, so grateful to everyone involved who made it possible,” she said, referring to community members in Cary who showed up, including from churches, as well as congressional members, her lawyer, activists and others who were vocal about his situation.
Johnson’s medical event occurred on July 30, after he had been in detention in Georgia for about half a month. His family says that he did not receive proper care in custody; ICE and CoreCivic, which runs the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia detention facility, have disputed those allegations, as previously reported by The N&O.
As for why he was detained, ICE previously said Johnson has been under a removal order since 1991, having overstayed a six-month permission to stay, and has a criminal record. The N&O could not independently verify that record, nor would Gabri comment on it.
Gabri said previously he was granted protection from deportation in 2004 and has complied with requirements stemming from that since.
Johnson, who has been married for 30 years and has four children, came to the U.S. from Liberia at age 16 in the 1980s, a decade that began with a violent military coup and grew into political repression before erupting into civil war by its end. Since his arrival, he graduated from N.C. Central University in 2002 and has been a pastor for about 20 years.
Johnson was detained by ICE around 8:30 a.m. on July 15. He was taken to the Cary detention center, where he soon experienced a blood pressure crisis — stage 2 hypertension — and was admitted to WakeMed. Johnson had previously suffered a series of strokes in 2020 that led to brain damage, requiring him to take six to eight medications a day, Gabri previously told The N&O.
After being released that evening from WakeMed, he remained in ICE custody and was transferred to Stewart Detention Center in Georgia the following day. While there, Gabri said her father told the family he was not consistently given his blood pressure and stroke medications. She said he also sometimes went without food or water during transfers, including one instance when agents took him to a military base and pressured him to sign deportation papers and board a plane, two days before a hearing to halt his deportation.
On July 29, ICE flew Johnson to Texas, where he ended up at Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, about 40 miles south of Dallas. The next morning, Gabri said Johnson called his family and told them he loved them and was not feeling well. She said he told them he had not received food or medication in the 24 hours since he was flown from Georgia to Texas.
Around 11 a.m. July 30, Johnson was admitted to a Dallas-area hospital. ICE confirmed at the time to The N&O he was hospitalized for “stroke-like symptoms” but denied allegations that he was denied medical care. ICE did not directly address The N&O’s questions about Johnson’s treatment before his hospitalization.
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Gabri and her family traveled to Texas on Aug. 1 and went to the hospital, where she said they were initially not allowed to see Johnson. They were ultimately allowed a one-hour visit and eventually traveled back to the Triangle — though they later returned to visit him again — to continue to advocate on Johnson’s behalf. That included via a federal court case filed in Texas. Johnson’s request for a temporary restraining order was filed on Tuesday, and the court ordered the following day that federal officials cannot deport him, including to another country apart from Liberia, or transfer him out of the court’s jurisdiction while the case proceeds.
Gabri said she got a call from her father’s lawyer around 3 p.m. on Wednesday.
Expecting bad news, she told the attorney, “Honestly, I don’t have the capacity.” But the attorney said she’d want to hear it.
After the Wednesday order from the judge, ICE issued Johnson’s release.
The immediate focus of the family right now is getting Johnson into therapy, said Gabri.
“It’s been over a month of him being told (by doctors) that he needed to go to rehab, and that not getting the treatment that he needed could be holding him back from recovery,” Gabri said Saturday, adding that it’s not clear whether he’ll be able to make a full recovery.
Still, now that he can finally access care, Gabri said they just want to support him, having found a place to stay close to a first cousin who lives in the area. They don’t have plans to bring him back to the Triangle, as doctors haven’t given the OK for that and he can’t presently walk.
Gabri previously told The N&O in mid-August that, based on conversations with nurses, it was her understanding that her father was receiving very limited physical therapy at the hospital. She also said Johnson’s right leg was secured to his bed with an ankle cuff, so he rarely left his bed. Gabri said nurses told her the cuff could increase the risk of another stroke because Johnson was taking anticoagulant medication.
The hospital planned to transfer Johnson to a rehabilitation facility, Gabri said at the time, but the facility did not want ICE agents there. ICE requires agents to accompany detainees receiving outside care. Gabri said ICE then canceled the transfer and told the hospital Johnson would remain in its care. ICE said in a previous statement that it does not make clinical decisions or interfere with medical treatment.
But once the judge’s order was issued, Gabri said ICE left promptly, and Johnson has been “a normal patient at the hospital for the first time since he was taken in.”
“It was such a huge relief,” she said.
Still, she can’t fully breathe yet. As for whether ICE can take him back after rehab, that’s currently unclear, Gabri said.
“We’re not fully out of the woods legally, nor with his health,” said Gabri. “We’ve won a battle but not the war. We’re still talking to the lawyers to figure out what our next step is.”
She’s also looking to make emergency arrangements for passports, should her father end up getting deported to a third country that is not Liberia, a practice the Trump administration has escalated.
“The main thing our family is really looking forward to is just being able to have a family dinner at home; it’s just something that we took for granted,” Gabri said, with her family often grilling and her father making pepper soup.
“It started to feel like that would never happen again, and we were all grieving that so heavily. And now that that seems to be possible again, we just want to we just want to look forward to family dinner again and the home we’ve lived in for 22 years,” she said.
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Twumasi Duah-Mensah contributed to this report.