For the second time since May, Border Patrol agents have reportedly skirted their own “sensitive locations” policy—which says that hospitals are generally off-limits, excluding “exigent circumstances”—to target yet another immigrant family seeking urgent medical care. This inhumanity will lead to even more devastating consequences, with families becoming too afraid to access medical care because of the deportation force:
A 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who had gall bladder surgery at Driscoll Children’s Hospital is under threat of deportation after crossing a Customs and Border Protection checkpoint to get to Corpus Christi for the surgery.
The girl’s mother, Felipa Delacruz, told the Caller-Times on Tuesday she received a call from the Mexican Consulate about her daughter, Rosamaria Hernandez. She was told her child faces deportation or could be sent to a detention center after she is released from Driscoll Children's Hospital.
Delacruz, who also lacks legal immigration status, said Tuesday federal agents are waiting outside her daughter's hospital room. Delacruz is in Laredo.
Delacruz's niece Aurora Cantu, who is a U.S. citizen, accompanied Rosamaria past the checkpoint. Delacruz said they were escorted by federal agents to Corpus Christi from there.
This past May, agents targeted undocumented parents rushing their sick 2-month-old boy to a hospital. Now in this latest incident, agents have turned their sights on a girl with special needs. Like the Sanchez family, Cantu and Rosamaria had to cross a checkpoint in order to reach a second medical facility. And yet again, agents appear to be violating their own policy by lingering like spiders to possibly detain a child “scheduled to have surgery after she had complications with kidney stones”:
When asked Tuesday to confirm if a federal immigration agency was on the hospital’s premises awaiting the child’s release, Driscoll Children’s Hospital spokesman Ben Castle said “that’s not something we would confirm,” citing patient confidentiality.
Notice they’re not denying it either. Remember that when congressional Republicans talk about increasing immigration enforcement with no oversight, we’re only getting more despicable actions like this. The only thing Rosamaria’s family should be worrying about is her getting better. Now they’re worried she’ll be torn from the country she’s lived in since she was three months old. Remember this the next time Donald Trump, John Kelly, Thomas Homan, and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III tell you they’re targeting only “bad hombres.”