Sofia is four years old with dark curls, and wears a black backpack. It carries the constant supply of intravenous nutrition on which she depends due to short bowel syndrome, a condition that prevents her from absorbing nutrients like other children. Her mother Deysi Vargas says Sofia’s life is much better than it was before. The child was born in Mexico, where she spent two years going from hospital to hospital. She had six surgeries, blood infections, and was on the brink of death several times. In 2023, after a CBP One appointment, her family crossed over from Tijuana to San Diego. They did so legally thanks to humanitarian parole, and once in California, Sofia began to receive the treatment she needed. She was able to leave the hospital, go to parks, school, the supermarket. They were stable, thought her mother — until now. Donald Trump’s obsessive persecution of migrants turned toward Sofia. Her family received a deportation notice that, the child’s doctor says, could cost her life.
In the United States, fear has taken hold. With Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, the government became a hunter. At first, the Republican said those deported would be migrants who had entered the country without proper documentation. But before long, innocent men were being sent illegally to El Salvador prisons, raids taking place in churches and schools, detentions started to look like kidnappings, and actions were being taken against pregnant women who the administration looks to separate from their babies. Many of those who have been deported had legal permission to enter the United States, some of them were even U.S. citizens. And children are hardly safe from this brutal campaign.
Sofia was born to a Mexican mother and Colombian father in Playa del Carmen, on Mexico’s Caribbean coast. For two years, her family searched for medical options to save her life within the country, Vargas told the Los Angeles Times. They moved to Mexico City and though the little girl hung on, she wasn’t getting any better. CBP One gave them hope they desperately needed. The application — which was deactivated by Trump on his first day in office — allowed migrants to schedule an appointment with U.S. border authorities, present their case and apply for asylum. The Vargas family were approved and entered California in July 2023.
Just over a year later, the little girl was able to leave the hospital and move with her parents to the eastern California town of Bakersfield, where Deysi is a restaurant janitor. Sofia was able to experience “the most normal life possible,” according to her mother’s account. The little girl still has to be connected to a feeding tube — the technology is called Total Parenteral Nutrition — for 14 hours a night that delivers the nutrients she needs directly to her stomach. But she is no longer confined to a medical facility.
In April, her family received the same message as hundreds of other migrants on humanitarian parole saying that their legal status had been terminated, and that their best option was to leave the United States of their own volition before they were tracked down and deported by immigration authorities. Soon after, Vargas’s work permit was revoked. Desperation led her to contact Public Counsel, a pro bono legal services provider that operates the Immigrants’ Rights Project. With the group’s help, she is filing a new application for humanitarian parole based on the little girl’s medical condition. The family’s lawyers explained at a press conference that the family’s legal status had been canceled in error.
Sofia’s doctor at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where the child was admitted for more than a year and now attends monthly check-ups — wrote to the Times that, “Patients on home TPN are not allowed to leave the country because the infrastructure to provide TPN or provide immediate intervention if there is a problem with IV access depends on our program’s utilization of U.S.-based healthcare resources and does not transfer across borders.” Doctor John Arsenault added that interruption in the little girl’s treatment “could be fatal within a matter of days.”
The case has captured media attention in a country wracked by similar tragedies. On Thursday, 38 California Democratic lawmakers signed a letter sent to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, asking her to reconsider the decision to deport the family. “We believe this family’s situation clearly meets the need for humanitarian aid and urge you and this Administration to reconsider its decision. It is our duty to protect the sick, vulnerable, and defenseless,” it states. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry has released a statement with a reminder that the family “had not violated the conditions of their stay.” The office has pledged to “full consular support and assistance,” and that its lawyers will “intercede with state and federal legislators to prevent the deportation.”
“Deporting this family under these conditions is not only unlawful, it constitutes a moral failure that violates the basic tenets of humanity and decency,” said Gina Amato Lough, directing attorney at Public Counsel. “These are people coming to us for protection, and instead we are sending them to die.”
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