Almost a year agoan 11-year-old American citizen, undergoing treatment for a rare brain tumor was interrupted when his parents were deported to Mexico. Her parents and four siblings, three of whom are also U.S. citizens, have spent the last year living in a dangerous part of Mexico and watched her recovery stall as they fight for her to access care.
“It’s been a really difficult year,” the girl’s mother told NBC News in Spanish this month, as she choked up. “It’s hard not to break down.”
The family’s quest to return to the United States is now reaching a critical point, the mother said. In Mexico, without continued access to the medical care the girl needs, the brain tumor that once threatened her life could grow again.
NBC News is not releasing the names of the mother and other family members because they were deported to an area of Mexico known for kidnapping U.S. citizens.
When American doctors reviewed the results of the girl’s last MRI was in Maythey discovered that his brain is not regenerating, an important part of recovery that helps restore lost neurological functions such as motor skills and speech. This means “there is a high risk that the tumor will come back,” the mother said, explaining her conversation with doctors.
It also makes it more urgent for her daughter to return to the United States, so her doctors can keep her under close monitoring, she added.
An 11-year-old girl, recovering from a brain tumor and a U.S. citizen, was sent to Mexico with her undocumented parents last year. The Texas Civil Rights Project blurred the photo for their safety.Texas Civil Rights ProjectHaving some difficulty pronouncing her words, the 11-year-old described worsening headaches and persistent body pain, particularly in one foot and hand, during a brief telephone conversation with NBC News this month.
“I have so much pain in my head, my foot, my hand,” she said in Spanish. “I want to heal.”
The mother said her daughter is also experiencing seizures more frequently, a concern that often keeps her up at night.
In order to properly monitor the girl’s condition, her specialist doctors in the United States recommend that she have an MRI scan every three months. Since arriving in Mexico almost a year ago, the young girl has only been able to obtain one.
For months, the family has been impatiently waiting for a response from immigration authorities. about the application for humanitarian parole that they filed in June 2025, it could allow the parents, who are undocumented, and a noncitizen sibling to enter and temporarily live in the United States to help the 11-year-old girl while she receives medical treatment.
While applications for humanitarian parole are processed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, applications submitted by previously deported individuals are adjudicated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. USCIS and ICE have not commented on this specific case.
Attorney Danny Woodward of the Texas Civil Rights Project, the legal defense and litigation organization representing the family, said humanitarian parole can be granted “to anyone, regardless of immigration history.”
“It’s at the discretion of the government, and this case really deserves it,” Woodward said.
Immigration authorities removed the family from Texas after deporting the family’s undocumented parents. Their faces have been blurred and their names have not been released for security reasons.Texas Civil Rights ProjectMedical records obtained by Woodward as part of the family’s efforts to obtain humanitarian parole show the girl’s brain tumor was caused by an unnamed “new disease.” This makes it a rare tumor and difficult to treat, his mother explained in Spanish.
The mother said she is “still waiting for a miracle” and hopes to get humanitarian parole. She said the health care options available to her daughter in Mexico are extremely limited.
U.S. citizens, including minors, cannot access care in Mexico’s public health system and are often required to do so. pay in advance to benefit from emergency medical services. For the family, the last alternative is to receive care through private coverage and pay medical costs out of pocket, which the mother says she cannot afford.
“It’s horrible,” the mother said, remembering experiencing these limitations one day when her daughter began convulsing. She called an ambulance, but dispatchers told her they wouldn’t send one because her daughter is “technically not from Mexico.” The mother ended up borrowing a car and driving 2 1/2 hours to take her daughter to the hospital.
Medical staff there said they did not understand her daughter’s condition well enough to treat her effectively and recommended that she be sent back to the United States for treatment.
“Throughout our time in the United States, we always respected the country, respected the people, maintained good morals with everyone and helped in any way we could,” the mother said. “Not having access to anything now, it’s like the world is falling apart. »
Car ride to hospital leads to deportation The family’s immigration predicament began on February 3, 2025, after the then 10-year-old girl woke up dizzy, with headaches and body aches. Her mother said the worrying symptoms appeared exactly a year after surgeons carried out an emergency procedure to remove a tumor from her daughter’s brain.
Fearing his symptoms signaled setbacks During her recovery, the parents piled their children, ages 17, 14, 11, 10 and 8, into a car and rushed from the Rio Grande Valley area where they lived to a Houston hospital, where medical specialists had been treating the girl’s condition since the surgery.
But the family never made it to the Houston hospital. Border Patrol agents arrested them as they stopped at a mandatory crossing point. immigration checkpoint in Texas.
Before President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, the family had already successfully passed this checkpoint several times, Woodward said. They would present letters from the Houston hospital and an immigration attorney, as well as the children’s birth certificates.
“This is a family with no criminal record who was traveling to Houston specifically to get medical care for their daughter who had a brain tumor removed,” said Woodward, the attorney.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment, but the agency previously told NBC News that parents had already received ” expedited removal orders”, adding that when someone “chooses to ignore them, they will suffer the consequences.”
The family’s departure for Mexico took a heavy toll on their eldest son, a 18-year-old U.S. citizen remaining in Texas and who sends her now 11-year-old sister the seizure medication she needs.
The siblings in Mexico told NBC News they can’t wait to reunite with him. The youngest, aged 8, said he misses eating pizza and playing games with his big brother.
The 11-year-old said she misses her older brother, as well as her specialist doctors and school friends.
The girl’s 14-year-old sister broke down as she described how stressful it was to watch her younger sister not receive “proper treatment and medication” in Mexico. The 17-year-old brother said he struggled to adjust to a new life in a very rural part of Mexico as he tried to complete his education online.
“It’s been quite stressful being in an environment that I’m not used to being in,” he said.
The family’s case was among the first concerned detentions and removals of U.S. citizen children, including minors serious health problemsas part of the expulsions of their parents at the start of Trump’s second term. Several other cases emerged during this period, including three other U.S. citizen children, ages 7, 4 and 2, who were sent to Honduras with their undocumented mothers in April. The 4 year old child had stage 4 cancer.
DHS said he does not deport American children. Instead, it asks deported parents if they would rather be deported with their U.S. citizen children than be separated.
Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said “it’s just not a choice — it’s all being forced on them.”
Parents about to be deported may risk losing custody of their U.S.-born children if conditions are unclear. powers of attorney or guardianship indicating who will care for children left behind. Otherwise, children are placed in the U.S. foster care system, making it more difficult for their parents to regain custody in the future.
The 11-year-old said that when she feels down, one of her favorite activities is to sing karaoke to the tunes of her favorite artists, Carín León and K-pop Demon Hunters, especially their electric hit song “Golden”. It reminds her of happy times, of her return to school with her friends and of the life she left behind in Texas.
