A Texas family traveling to an emergency medical appointment for their 10-year-old daughter, who was recovering from brain cancer, was detained and swiftly deported to Mexico by immigration authorities last month.
In early February, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stopped the family at a checkpoint while they were traveling from their home in Rio Grande, Texas, to Houston, where the child’s medical specialists are based. The family had previously made the trip multiple times without issue, presenting letters from lawyers and doctors that allowed them to pass. However, this time, officials deemed the documents insufficient and arrested the parents for lacking proper paperwork, despite their clean record.
The family, which included four other children—three of whom are U.S. citizens—was forced to make a painful decision: stay together and return to Mexico or leave the children behind. They ultimately chose to remain as a unit.
The 10-year-old had recently undergone brain surgery, and her doctors in Houston were closely monitoring her recovery.
In addition, the family’s 15-year-old son suffers from Long QT syndrome, a serious heart condition requiring medical care they now cannot access in Mexico.
Following their detention, CBP agents transported the family to a detention center, where the mother and daughters were separated from the father and sons. Within hours, they were placed in a van and dropped off in Mexico. The family initially stayed in a shelter before finding a home, but the mother reported that her children struggle to sleep, fearing for their safety in an area where U.S. citizens are frequently kidnapped.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus condemned the deportation, calling it “a new low” and accusing the Trump administration of “losing all humanity.”
Immigration advocates had long warned that Trump’s mass deportation policies would put mixed-status families—those with both undocumented and U.S. citizen members—at risk. Estimates suggest up to 4 million such families face separation under these policies.
When questioned about the impact of deporting mixed-status families, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, stated in December that the responsibility lay with the parents, saying, “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position.”
