10-Year-Old Immigrant Is Detained After Agents Stop Her on Way to Surgery
- 7 years ago
10-Year-Old Immigrant Is Detained After Agents Stop Her on Way to Surgery
The girl, Rosamaria Hernandez, who was brought over the border illegally to live in Laredo, Tex., when she was three months old, was being transferred from a medical
center in Laredo to a hospital in Corpus Christi around 2 a.m. on Tuesday when Border Patrol agents stopped the ambulance she was riding in, her family said.
Rosamaria’s cousin, Aurora Cantu, a United States citizen who was riding with her in the ambulance and accompanied her to the hospital, told Rosamaria’s mother and others working on the case
that the agents had at first tried to persuade the family to agree to have the girl transferred to a Mexican hospital, pressing the family to sign a voluntary departure form for her.
By Wednesday evening, according to family members and advocates involved in her case, immigration agents had taken her to a facility in San Antonio where migrant children
who arrive alone in the United States from Central America are usually held, even though her parents, who both lack legal status, live 150 miles away in Laredo.
Her mother, Felipa de la Cruz, 39, said in an interview
that her family had moved to Texas from Nuevo Laredo, the city in Mexico just across the border from Laredo, when her daughter was still an infant, hoping to get better treatment for her cerebral palsy.
A 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy has been detained by federal immigration authorities in Texas after she
passed through a Border Patrol checkpoint on her way to a hospital to undergo emergency gall bladder surgery.
The agents allowed her to continue to Driscoll Children’s Hospital, the family said,
but followed the ambulance the rest of the way there, then waited outside her room until she was released from the hospital.
The entire time Rosamaria was in surgery and then in recovery, several armed Border Patrol agents stood outside her hospital room, the family said.
The girl, Rosamaria Hernandez, who was brought over the border illegally to live in Laredo, Tex., when she was three months old, was being transferred from a medical
center in Laredo to a hospital in Corpus Christi around 2 a.m. on Tuesday when Border Patrol agents stopped the ambulance she was riding in, her family said.
Rosamaria’s cousin, Aurora Cantu, a United States citizen who was riding with her in the ambulance and accompanied her to the hospital, told Rosamaria’s mother and others working on the case
that the agents had at first tried to persuade the family to agree to have the girl transferred to a Mexican hospital, pressing the family to sign a voluntary departure form for her.
By Wednesday evening, according to family members and advocates involved in her case, immigration agents had taken her to a facility in San Antonio where migrant children
who arrive alone in the United States from Central America are usually held, even though her parents, who both lack legal status, live 150 miles away in Laredo.
Her mother, Felipa de la Cruz, 39, said in an interview
that her family had moved to Texas from Nuevo Laredo, the city in Mexico just across the border from Laredo, when her daughter was still an infant, hoping to get better treatment for her cerebral palsy.
A 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy has been detained by federal immigration authorities in Texas after she
passed through a Border Patrol checkpoint on her way to a hospital to undergo emergency gall bladder surgery.
The agents allowed her to continue to Driscoll Children’s Hospital, the family said,
but followed the ambulance the rest of the way there, then waited outside her room until she was released from the hospital.
The entire time Rosamaria was in surgery and then in recovery, several armed Border Patrol agents stood outside her hospital room, the family said.