U.S. citizen child with brain cancer deported to Mexico after parents arrested in Texas

The Trump administration last month deported a 10-year-old girl battling brain cancer to Mexico after her parents were picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Texas, NBC News reports.

The girl, who’s a U.S. citizen, and her parents were traveling from Rio Grande City to Houston in February for a doctor’s appointment. The family had made the tip several times since the daughter was diagnosed with cancer last year.

Even though the parents are undocumented, the family had been able to traverse checkpoints by showing officers letters from doctors and lawyers about the girl’s cancer treatments, according to NBC.

However, that all changed with the Trump White House’s immigration crackdown.

Instead of allowing the family to travel to to their daughter’s medical appointment during an early February trip, agents detained the family and put them into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, the news organization reports.

The parents and five of their children were then placed on a bus and driven to Mexico, where they’ve remained since, according to NBC.

“Deporting a 10-year-old U.S. citizen child recovering from a brain tumor and their family is not making our country or any child ‘safer’ — it is instilling trauma and life-threatening consequences on entire communities,” Kelly Albinak, a director at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, said in a statement emailed to the Current.

The girl’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico in 2013 and had no criminal history, the family’s attorney told NBC. Since the deportation, the 10-year-old hasn’t been able to receive the life-saving medical care she needs, the family also said.

“The authorities have my children’s lives in their hands,” the girl’s mother told NBC.

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This article appears in Mar 5-18, 2025.