San Antonio’s Joaquin Castro, other lawmakers visit deported 11-year-old U.S. citizen with brain tumor

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro and other members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) traveled south of the border last Friday to draw attention to the plight of a family caught up in the Trump White House’s harsh immigration crackdown.

The San Antonio Democrat joined CHC Chair Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y. and CHC Whip Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, in visiting the family of seven in Northern Mexico, where they have been unable to get treatment for their 11-year-old daughter who has a rare brain tumor and is a U.S. citizen.

The U.S. deported the parents, who are undocumented, in February along with the 11-year-old and her four siblings, NBC News reports. Their removal came after a routine stop at a Customs and Border Protection checkpoint on their way from Rio Grande City, Texas to Houston for a doctor’s appointment.

The family made the trip several times since the daughter was diagnosed with cancer last year, according to NBC News. They said they’d previously been allowed to pass by showing letters from doctors and lawyers about the girl’s treatments.

Castro told the Current the family is “clearly traumatized” by the incident, adding that CBP agents confiscated the girl’s anti-seizure medication. Since the deportation, the parents have been unable to enroll her in school or get treatment needed for a side effect of the tumor that ultimately could rob her of her eyesight.

“I recently said that under the Trump administration, it seems like our country loses more of its humanity every single day,” Castro said. “And I think this is a prime example, because when this family went through the inland CBP checkpoint, the agents bullied the family and intimidated them, and threatened the parents that they would take away their kids and place them with strangers.”

Attorneys with the Texas Civil Rights Project are working with the family to help its return to the U.S., or at the least, allow the mother to accompany the 11-year old as she comes back for treatments, Castro said. Still, he urged people concerned about the situation to call members of Congress and urge them to pressure the Trump administration to allow the family’s return.

“Many of us are going to support the family’s efforts for humanitarian parole to allow her mom — well, to allow the whole family, but especially her mom, who’s her main caregiver — to come with her for treatments in the United States,” Castro said. “She has a very rare type [of] brain tumor, and you can’t just get treatment anywhere for it. In Mexico, and in other parts of the world, there really aren’t specialists for that.”

The CHC mission to Mexico is the latest bid by Democratic lawmakers to draw attention to the White House’s deportations of people who are in the country legally. Castro accused the administration of conducting removals without due process.

Last month, Democratic lawmakers visited El Salvador to urge the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man legally living in Maryland before he was deported to a maximum security prison in that country. Even though multiple Trump administration officials admitted Abrego Garcia’s removal was a mistake, the White House has expressed no interest in facilitating his return.

The concern over the fate of Abrego Garcia and the deported family in Mexico comes as senior White House advisor Stephen Miller said the Trump administration is “actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus. Habeas corpus is the constitutionally guaranteed right for a person to challenge their detention by the government.

“Part of the problem is that Trump is dismantling the legal infrastructure for a lot of these things,” Castro said of the family’s effort to return to the U.S. “They filed complaints with the civil rights division of CBP or DHS, and Trump has basically dismantled that. So, it’s like the administration’s ignoring the law, doing bad things, and then erasing the watchdogs that would be able to go back and fix the wrongs that were done to this family or others.”

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This article appears in Apr 30 – May 13, 2025.