A Texas family on their way to an emergency medical check-up for their 10-year-old daughter, who is recovering from brain cancer, was detained by immigration authorities and hastily deported to Mexico last month.
In early February, Customs and Border Protection stopped the family at an immigration checkpoint while they were traveling from Rio Grande, Texas, where they lived, to Houston, where their daughter’s specialists are located — a trip the family had made at least five other times before without incident, according to an attorney representing the family.
During their previous trips, the undocumented parents of the 10-year-old, who is a U.S. citizen, were allowed through the checkpoint after presenting authorities with letters from lawyers and their daughter’s doctors. This time, however, authorities deemed those letters insufficient and arrested the parents for not providing proper documentation. The family’s attorney said the parents have no criminal history.
In addition to the 10-year-old girl, four other children, all but one born in the U.S., were in the car with the parents when they were detained. The parents were then forced to make a difficult decision: Return to Mexico as a family, or leave their children behind in the U.S. As NBC News reports, that’s hardly a choice:
[U]ndocumented parents of U.S.-born children, if picked up by immigration authorities, face the risk of losing custody of their children. Without a power-of-attorney document or a guardianship outlining who will take care of the children left behind, the children go into the U.S. foster care system, making it harder for the parents to regain custody of their children in the future.
The family ultimately decided to remain together.
The 10-year-old girl was diagnosed with brain cancer last year and recently underwent surgery to remove the tumor. Doctors in Houston have been closely monitoring her recovery.
After the family was detained, the mother, who spoke exclusively to NBC News, said authorities took the family to a detention center, where they separated her and her daughters from her husband and sons. Within hours, CBP agents loaded the family into a van and dropped them in Mexico.
After spending time in a shelter, the family has moved into a house. However, according to the mother, her children are unable to sleep due to concerns about their safety, having been left in an area of Mexico where U.S. citizens are often kidnapped.
The 10-year-old isn’t the only member of the family who is being treated for a medical condition. The couple’s 15-year-old son has a heart disorder known as Long QT syndrome, which causes irregular heartbeats and can be life-threatening if not properly treated. The mother told NBC News both children are unable to receive the health care they need in Mexico.
In a post on X, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus called the family’s deportation “a new low” and said the Trump administration has “lost all humanity.”
Before Donald Trump took office, immigrant advocacy groups raised the alarm over how his mass deportation policies could affect mixed-status families (that is, families in which some members are undocumented while others are U.S. citizens). According to estimates from the American Immigration Council, as many as 4 million mixed-status families are at risk of being separated under Trump’s policies.
When Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, was asked in December how he would approach deporting mixed-status families, he told The Washington Post that the risk of separation was ultimately the fault of the parents.
“Here’s the issue,” Homan said. “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position.”