Skip in Skip x Embed x Share CLOSE A Guatemalan migrant mother and son have called an Austin, Texas church home for more than a year. They have no intentions of leaving it, due to their fear of being deported. (Feb. 23) AP 
 
 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. (Photo: Contributed) 
 
 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. 
 
 A 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who underwent surgery at Driscoll Children’s Hospital is under threat of deportation after crossing a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint to get to Corpus Christi for the surgery. (Photo: Contributed) 
 
 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. 
 
 An Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy discourages enforcement actions at sensitive locations — including hospitals, schools, places of worship, public ceremonies or demonstrations. 
 
 The policy states such enforcement should generally be avoided and requires either prior approval from an appropriate supervisory official or exigent circumstances necessitating immediate action. 
 
 Rosamaria was scheduled to have surgery after she had complications with kidney stones, Delacruz said. 
 
 Rosamaria was first treated at Driscoll Children's Specialty Center in Laredo, where it was divulged to a nurse that the child is undocumented, Delacruz said. 
 
 Rosamaria, who was brought to the U.S. illegally by her mother when she was about 3 months old, is a recipient of state’s Special Health Care Needs Services Program, Delacruz said. The Texas Health and Human Services program helps children with special health-care needs. 
 
 This is a developing story. Check back to Caller.com for updates. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://callertim.es/2yIma38 ||||| A 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy has been detained by federal immigration authorities in Texas after she passed through a Border Patrol checkpoint on her way to a hospital to undergo emergency gall bladder surgery. 
 
 The girl, Rosamaria Hernandez, who was brought over the border illegally to live in Laredo, Tex., when she was three months old, was being transferred from a medical center in Laredo to a hospital in Corpus Christi around 2 a.m. on Tuesday when Border Patrol agents stopped the ambulance she was riding in, her family said. The agents allowed her to continue to Driscoll Children’s Hospital, the family said, but followed the ambulance the rest of the way there, then waited outside her room until she was released from the hospital. 
 
 By Wednesday evening, according to family members and advocates involved in her case, immigration agents had taken her to a facility in San Antonio where migrant children who arrive alone in the United States from Central America are usually held, even though her parents, who both lack legal status, live 150 miles away in Laredo. 
 
 Her placement there highlighted the unusual circumstances of her case: The federal government maintains detention centers for adult immigrants it plans to deport, facilities for families who arrive at the border together and shelters for children who come by themselves, known as unaccompanied minors. But it is rare, if not unheard-of, for a child already living in the United States to be arrested — particularly one with a serious medical condition. ||||| Updated | Federal immigration agents detained an undocumented 10-year-old girl from Laredo, Texas, just out of emergency surgery on Wednesday. 
 
 Rosa Maria Hernandez, brought illegally into the United States at three months of age by her mother, was taken to Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, by her cousin. En route to the hospital, they were stopped at a Customs and Border Patrol checkpoint. Immigration agents then proceeded to follow the two to the hospital and remained there throughout the night. 
 
 Once she was discharged, Rosa Maria, who suffers from cerebral palsy, was escorted via ambulance to the Bexar County Juvenile Detention Center in San Antonio, Texas, by officers with Customs and Border Protection. 
 
 In a statement, the agency said it "is committed to enforcing the immigration laws of this nation," which include detaining undocumented immigrants. 
 
 "Due to the juvenile’s medical condition, Border Patrol agents escorted her and her cousin to a Corpus Christi hospital where she could receive appropriate medical care," the statement continued. 
 
 "Per the immigration laws of the United States, once medically cleared she will be processed accordingly," the statement concluded. 
 
 That process was expected to begin Thursday with a hearing to ultimately determine what will happen to Rosa Maria, who has brought to the United States without proper authorization by her mother when she was three months old. 
 
 Rosa Maria’s story highlights the newfound relentlessness in immigration arrests and detentions. Schools, churches, courthouses and hospitals—once “safe zones” from immigrant detention—are now open to arrests. 
 
 “This wouldn’t have happened during the [Barack] Obama administration,” one of Rosa Maria’s lawyers, Alex Galvez, told Newsweek. “This current administration wants to send a clear message to all undocumented immigrants—that if you want to go to [a] hospital, you better think twice about it because you might be deported.” 
 
 For years, Hernandez and her mother have lived in Laredo, Texas, a small city of 250,000 residents on the U.S.-Mexico border. Rosa Maria suffered from gallstones and was in need of emergency surgery. Doctors in Laredo informed her mother, Felipa De La Cruz, who is also undocumented, that the nearest children’s hospital capable of doing the operation was in Corpus Christi, a port city two and half hours away by car. 
 
 That presented a problem for De La Cruz: She would have to drive through a Border Patrol checkpoint near Freer, Texas. Instead of taking the risk of being detained and delaying her daughter’s operation, De La Cruz asked one of Rosa Maria’s cousins, Aurora Cantu, to take her instead. Rosa Maria’s doctors in Laredo gave Cantu a notarized letter to present at the checkpoint notifying the officers that she was transporting an undocumented person to receive emergency medical services. 
 
 When she arrived at the checkpoint, Border Patrol officers informed her that she was allowed to drive her cousin to the hospital, but they also told her that two agents would be driving right behind them straight to Corpus Christi. 
 
 After the operation was complete, Rosa Maria was taken to a hospital room where the two Border Patrol officers who followed them there stood waiting. That same night, Leticia Gonzalez, an immigration attorney from San Antonio, was informed about Rosa Maria’s case and rushed over to Driscoll. 
 
 By the time the lawyer arrived, there were five armed and fully uniformed Border Patrol agents waiting outside Rosa Maria's door, she said, adding that hospital staff did not allow her to go into Rosa Maria's room. She then threatened the agents and the hospital staff that she would go on one of the city’s popular Spanish radio stations and tell the public that she wasn’t allowed to see her client. The hospital and the agents obliged. 
 
 Newsweek contacted Driscoll Children’s Hospital, but officials refused to discuss the hospital’s policy regarding immigration agents on the premises. They also did not confirm Hernandez’s account due to privacy laws with respect to their patients. The hospital was embroiled in controversy in September when NPR reported that the undocumented parents of a two-month-old infant receiving treatment were detained by immigration officials upon arrival in May. 
 
 As her attorney, Gonzalez was informed by the agents that they were taking Rosa Maria to a detention center in Houston. Then, about an hour later, the agents told her that the 10-year-old would instead be taken by an ambulance to a detention center in San Antonio later Wednesday afternoon. Gonzalez petitioned the agents to allow Rosa Maria to be discharged from the custody of her grandfather, a U.S. permanent resident, who was on his way to the hospital from Laredo. They refused. 
 
 As the time approached for Rosa Maria’s removal, Gonzalez was shocked to see that an immigration officer was preparing to ride in the back of the ambulance with Rosa Maria and her cousin. Gonzalez successfully petitioned that the officer instead ride in the front. 
 
 “This 10-year-old child has cerebral palsy—she has the mental capacity closer to a 5- or 6-year old,” she said. “What good does it do to have an armed immigration officer riding with her in the back of an ambulance?” 
 
 According to Galvez, who is based in Los Angeles, California, the Department of Homeland Security will now determine whether or not it's best to allow Rosa Maria to go back home to her mother. The process usually takes longer than two months, but Galvez has been assured by Homeland Security that they will expedite the process given the circumstances. 
 
 
 
 "They told me we should expect to hear back in about two to three weeks," he said. 
 
 
 
 In the meantime, Rosa Maria will live at the Bexar County Juvenile Detention Center, where visitors are allowed to come and check up on her—only if said visitors are U.S. citizens. 
 
 
 
 "As we were taking out of the hospital, [Rosa Maria] looked visibly shaken," Gonzalez said. "The only thing this child wants is her mom." 
 
 
 
 For her part, De La Cruz is glad is doing well—Hernandez told Newsweek that Rosa Maria was released in stable condition—but worries about what awaits her at Bexar. 
 
 
 
 "I've always been at her side, and now that she needs me I'm not," she told Telemundo on Wednesday. "I have no idea how they're going to treat her. I'm scared." 
 
 Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified which Homeland Security agency was involved in the case. It was the Customs and Border Protection, not Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The story was also updated to include a comment from Customs and Border Protection on Thursday afternoon. Also, an earlier version misidentified the name of Rosa Maria's lawyer. Her name is Leticia Gonzalez. ||||| FILE - In this June 1, 2018, file photo, children hold signs during a demonstration in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Miramar, Fla. The Trump administration's move to separate... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this June 1, 2018, file photo, children hold signs during a demonstration in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Miramar, Fla. The Trump administration's move to separate immigrant parents from their children on the U.S.-Mexico border has turned into a full-blown crisis... (Associated Press) 
 
 McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of immigrant children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside. Scattered about are bottles of water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. 
 
 One teenager told an advocate who visited that she was helping care for a young child she didn't know because the child's aunt was somewhere else in the facility. She said she had to show others in her cell how to change the girl's diaper. 
 
 The U.S. Border Patrol on Sunday allowed reporters to briefly visit the facility where it holds families arrested at the southern U.S. border, responding to new criticism and protests over the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy and resulting separation of families. 
 
 More than 1,100 people were inside the large, dark facility that's divided into separate wings for unaccompanied children, adults on their own, and mothers and fathers with children. The cages in each wing open out into common areas to use portable restrooms. The overhead lighting in the warehouse stays on around the clock. 
 
 The Border Patrol said close to 200 people inside the facility were minors unaccompanied by a parent. Another 500 were "family units," parents and children. Many adults who crossed the border without legal permission could be charged with illegal entry and placed in jail, away from their children. 
 
 Reporters were not allowed by agents to interview any of the detainees or take photos. 
 
 Nearly 2,000 children have been taken from their parents since Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the policy, which directs Homeland Security officials to refer all cases of illegal entry into the United States for prosecution. Church groups and human rights advocates have sharply criticized the policy, calling it inhumane. 
 
 Stories have spread of children being torn from their parents' arms, and parents not being able to find where their kids have gone. A group of congressional lawmakers visited the same facility Sunday and were set to visit a longer-term shelter holding around 1,500 children — many of whom were separated from their parents. 
 
 "Those kids inside who have been separated from their parents are already being traumatized," said Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who was denied entry earlier this month to children's shelter. "It doesn't matter whether the floor is swept and the bedsheets tucked in tight." 
 
 In Texas' Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for people trying to enter the U.S., Border Patrol officials argue that they have to crack down on migrants and separate adults from children as a deterrent to others. 
 
 "When you exempt a group of people from the law ... that creates a draw," said Manuel Padilla, the Border Patrol's chief agent here. "That creates the trends right here." 
 
 Agents running the holding facility — generally known as "Ursula" for the name of the street it's on — said everyone detained is given adequate food, access to showers and laundered clothes, and medical care. People are supposed to move through the facility quickly. Under U.S. law, children are required to be turned over within three days to shelters funded by the Department of Health and Human Services. 
 
 Padilla said agents in the Rio Grande Valley have allowed families with children under the age of 5 to stay together in most cases. 
 
 An advocate who spent several hours in the facility Friday said she was deeply troubled by what she found. 
 
 Michelle Brane, director of migrant rights at the Women's Refugee Commission, met with a 16-year-old girl who had been taking care of a young girl for three days. The teen and others in their cage thought the girl was 2 years old. 
 
 "She had to teach other kids in the cell to change her diaper," Brane said. 
 
 Brane said that after an attorney started to ask questions, agents found the girl's aunt and reunited the two. It turned out that the girl was actually 4 years old. Part of the problem was that she didn't speak Spanish, but K'iche, a language indigenous to Guatemala. 
 
 "She was so traumatized that she wasn't talking," Brane said. "She was just curled up in a little ball." 
 
 Brane said she also saw officials at the facility scold a group of 5-year-olds for playing around in their cage, telling them to settle down. There are no toys or books. 
 
 But one boy nearby wasn't playing with the rest. According to Brane, he was quiet, clutching a piece of paper that was a photocopy of his mother's ID card. 
 
 "The government is literally taking kids away from their parents and leaving them in inappropriate conditions," Brane said. "If a parent left a child in a cage with no supervision with other 5-year-olds, they'd be held accountable." 
 
 Dr. Colleen Kraft, the head of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that she visited a small shelter in Texas recently, which she declined to identity. A toddler inside the 60-bed facility caught her eye — she was crying uncontrollably and pounding her little fists on mat. 
 
 Staff members tried to console the child, who looked to be about 2 years old, Kraft said. She had been taken from her mother the night before and brought to the shelter. 
 
 The staff gave her books and toys — but they weren't allowed to pick her up, to hold her or hug her to try to calm her. As a rule, staff aren't allowed to touch the children there, she said. 
 
 "The stress is overwhelming," she said. "The focus needs to be on the welfare of these children, absent of politics."
– An ICE "sensitive locations" directive says federal agents shouldn't try to enforce the law at such locations except under "exigent circumstances." But the family of Rosamaria Hernandez, a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who had gallbladder surgery at a hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, says ICE agents stalked her at the hospital, then took her to a San Antonio detention center for migrant kids—all while her parents, also illegal immigrants, are at their home in Laredo 150 miles away. Arresting a minor already living in the US, especially one with a medical issue, is a move the New York Times is calling "rare, if not unheard-of." It's also one that's prompted Rep. Joaquin Castro to issue a challenge to President Trump and Elaine Duke, the acting secretary of Homeland Security. "Show that this enforcement operation is prioritizing a dangerous criminal," Castro says in a statement. This all started when Rosamaria—brought to the US from Mexico as an infant by her parents, who hoped to get better treatment for her cerebral palsy—was rushed by ambulance from a Laredo medical center to Driscoll Children's Hospital for the emergency procedure. The Corpus Christi Caller-Times notes Rosamaria was with her cousin, a US citizen. The trip Tuesday meant the ambulance passed a Border Patrol checkpoint, and while agents let the ambulance go, they followed it, her family says. ICE agents hovered outside Rosamaria's room until she was released, then took her to the San Antonio detention center, Leticia Hernandez, an attorney for the family, tells Newsweek. Now, while Rosamaria's family and lawyers vie for her release from the center, only US citizens can visit her, per Newsweek. "The only thing this child wants is her mom," Hernandez says.