A family that was deported to Mexico hopes they can find a way to return to the U.S. and ensure their 10-year-old daughter, who is a U.S. citizen, can continue her brain cancer treatment.
Immigration authorities removed the girl and four of her American siblings from Texas on Feb. 4, when they deported their undocumented parents.
The family’s ordeal began last month, when they were rushing from Rio Grande, where they lived, to Houston, where their daughter’s specialist doctors are based, for an emergency medical checkup.
The parents had done the trip at least five other times in the past, passing through an immigration checkpoint every time without any issues, according to attorney Danny Woodward from the Texas Civil Rights Project, a legal advocacy and litigation organization representing the family. In previous occasions, the parents showed letters from their doctors and lawyers to the officers at the checkpoint to get through.
But in early February, the letters weren’t enough. When they stopped at the checkpoint, they were arrested after the parents were unable to show legal immigration documentation. The mother, who spoke exclusively to NBC News, said she tried explaining her daughter’s circumstances to the officers, but “they weren’t interested in hearing that.”
Other than lacking “valid immigration status in the U.S.,” the parents have “no criminal history,” Woodward said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which detained and deported the family, according to their lawyer, told NBC News in an email:”For privacy reasons, we do not comment on individual cases.”
The 10-year-old girl was diagnosed with brain cancer last year and underwent surgery to remove the tumor. Doctors “practically gave me no hope of life for her, but thank God she’s a miracle,” the mother said.
The swelling on the girl’s brain is still not fully gone, the mother said, causing difficulties with speech and mobility of the right side of her body. Before the family was removed from the U.S., the girl was routinely checking in with doctors monitoring her recovery, attending rehabilitation therapies and taking medication to prevent convulsions.
“It’s a very difficult thing,” the mother said. “I don’t wish anyone to go through this situation.”
“What is happening to this family is an absolute tragedy and it is something that is not isolated to just them,” said Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project.
“This is part of a pattern in practice that we’ve seen in the Trump administration,” Garza said, adding that she has heard of multiple other cases concerning mixed-status families. But for now, this is the only case of this nature the organization has taken on.
The Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, has said “families can be deported together” regardless of status. Homan said it would be up to the parents to decide whether to depart the U.S. together or leave their children behind.
But undocumented 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.
According to the girl’s mother, she recalled feeling like she could “not do anything,” she told NBC News in Spanish. “You’re between a rock and a hard place.”
NBC News is withholding the name of the mother and the rest of the family members, since they were deported to an area in Mexico that is known for kidnapping U.S. citizens.
In addition to the parents and their 10-year-old sick daughter, four of their other children, ages 15, 13, 8, and 6, were also in the car when they were detained. Four of the five children were born in the U.S.
According to the mother, the family was taken to a detention center following the arrest, where the mom and daughters were separated from her husband and sons and she realized she wouldn’t be taking her daughter to her doctors.
“The fear is horrible. I almost can’t explain it, but it’s something frustrating, very tough, something you wouldn’t wish on anyone,” she said, adding that her sick daughter was laying on a cold floor beneath incandescent lights.
Hours later, the family was placed in a van and dropped on the Mexico side of a Texas bridge, the mother said. From there, they sought refuge in a nearby shelter for a week.
The family has since moved into a house, but the mom said that safety concerns keep them up at night and the children haven’t been able to go to school.
The 10-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son, who lives with a heart disorder known as Long QT syndrome, which causes irregular heartbeats and can be life-threatening if not treated well, have not received the health care they need in Mexico, their mother said. The teen wears a monitor that tracks his heart rate.
“The authorities have my children’s lives in their hands,” she said in tears.
Both parents arrived to the U.S. from Mexico in 2013 and settled in Texas hoping for “a better life for the family,” the mother said. She and her husband both worked a string of different jobs to support their six children. The couple also has a 17-year-old son they left behind in Texas following their deportation.
Just two weeks ago, another undocumented mother in California caring for her 21-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen undergoing treatment for bone cancer, was detained by immigration authorities and later released under humanitarian parole.
“We are calling on the government,” Garza said, “to parole the family in, to correct the harm that they’ve made and to not do this to anyone else.”
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