Ten-year-old Rosamaria Hernandez and her family are inconsolable, according to the family’s attorney. The special needs child has been in a Texas detention center for unaccompanied minors since Wednesday, when federal immigration agents took her into custody following emergency gallbladder surgery. Immigration officials could easily release Rosamaria to either of her parents or other relatives, all of whom are in Texas, but they are so far refusing to:
The mother of a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who was detained in Texas on her way to the hospital for emergency surgery wept as she tried consoling her daughter on the phone, one of the girl’s lawyers said Thursday.
Through tears, and knowing her daughter faces deportation and a long time away from home, Felipa de la Cruz on Wednesday told her daughter, Rosamaria Hernandez, that everything would be OK, lawyer Alex Galvez told TIME.
"She said, 'Don't worry. We're going to see each other soon. Everything's going to fine. Hang in there.' She was trying to make her smile," Galvez recalled. "Her daughter said, 'Mom, where are you? I miss you. Why aren't you here? And they start crying.
According to the New York Times, immigration officials are also ignoring the advice of medical professionals: “Rosamaria’s doctors have recommended that she be released to a relative because of her illness … but the immigration agency has not yet consented to release her.” So for now, Rosamaria remains alone in detention and afraid.
“This is an immoral travesty,” California Senator Dianne Feinstein tweeted, and in a follow-up letter called for a briefing from acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, saying that “in all of my years in public service, I have never read a set of more morally reprehensible facts.” Feinstein:
"I find it appalling that immigration enforcement activities have become so reckless, I am required to write this letter," she wrote.
"What has this country come to? Is the desire to deport all undocumented people so great that Border Patrol agents would endanger the life of a child with cerebral palsy simply to put her into deportation proceedings? Feinstein said.
“They are treating her like a hardened convict,” Joaquin Castro (D-TX) said during a press conference regarding Rosamaria’s detainment. “[The Department of Homeland Security] claims to be prioritizing its apprehensions, but Rosamaria is not a threat to anyone’s safety. We ask that she be released to her family.”
What’s happening to Rosamaria is criminal. This white supremacist administration doesn’t believe brown and black lives are deserving of dignity, which is why legislators must do everything within their power to hold DHS accountable and free this little girl. Feinstein, Castro, and others have spoken out. Where are Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz?
Rosamaria’s advocates are circulating a petition calling on officials to release her and allow her to stay here in the United States, where she’s lived for nearly her entire life. Click here to sign and support Rosamaria.