A girl recovering from a rare brain tumor celebrated her 11th birthday on Sunday, hundreds of miles from everything she knew - her friends at school, her community in church, her home.
She was one of four U.S. citizens children sent to Mexico from Texas three months ago when immigration authorities deported her undocumented parents.
After a mixed immigration status family, worried that their safety was taken to areas known for their kidnapping of American citizens, they did not give up being able to return to the United States, mainly to continue the girl’s medical treatment.
The family headed to Monterrey to meet with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Friday morning. A family representative said they hope that sharing their immigration plight will inspire lawmakers to advocate for their return under humanitarian parole.
"The public's deportation of vulnerable U.S. citizens' children is indeed effective, and members of Congress are answering the call," Congressman Rochelle Garza, a legal advocacy and litigation group representing the family.
A spokesman for the Texas Civil Rights Program said Democratic representatives in New York.
"It is important that the public continues to pay attention to this, but also continues to attract and encourage members of Congress to take action," Garza said.
The girl's mother first told NBC News about family suffering in March. The case has attracted the attention of several other members of Congress, including Cory Booker, a democratic New Jersey, Alex Padilla, California, and Rep. Al Green, D-Texas.
Since then, five other similar cases, including a mother who was expelled back to Honduras with her two American citizens, last month, one of whom was a 4-year-old boy with stage 4 cancer, has been made public.
"It wouldn't surprise me if it was more systematic than what we're seeing right now," Garza said.
The mother had previously told NBC News that on February 3, the family drove from the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, to Houston, where their daughter’s expert doctors were located to conduct emergency checks.
On the way there, they stopped at a national immigration checkpoint and they had passed many times. Parents equipped their doctors and lawyers to show officials the checkpoint.
However, immigration authorities arrested parents after they were unable to display legal immigration documents. According to their attorney, Daniel Woodward has no “no criminal history” in addition to his lack of “effective immigration status in the United States.” He added that parents are getting T visas, which are temporary immigration benefits for victims of human trafficking.
Five of their 15, 13, 11, 8 and 6-year-olds (four of them are U.S. citizens) were with them when they were arrested. Parents and children were taken to the detention center, where they spent 24 hours putting them on the van on February 4 and set on the Mexican side of the Texas Bridge on February 4.
NBC News did not release the names of family members for security reasons.
The family’s attorney filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in March asking for an investigation into the abuse, and they say the family faces the family facing U.S. detention. In the documents, they also asked immigration authorities to grant humanitarian parole to undocumented parents, girls and one of her siblings.
But shortly after the lawyer filed a complaint, the KMT office protected the civil rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens, forcing them to reapply with the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services. They have not received a reply yet.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesman had previously told NBC News that reports on family situations were "inaccurate" and refused to speak on privacy reasons. "When someone gets an accelerated dismissal order and chooses to ignore them, they will face consequences," they said in a statement.
"The narrative that DHS is deporting children in the U.S. is false and irresponsible report," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement Thursday, in a statement. He added that immigration agencies are willing to move with their children to ensure they are relocated, or whether they are relocating to ensure that their custodians are willing to put them in the case of custodians, or
McLaughlin added that parents without documents can use the CBP Home App, Trump Administration’s self-deprived app, to “control their departure”.
The 11-year-old mother said in a Spanish video message while speaking in Mexico in March that she and her husband were detained “in the face of the worst decision, it was an impossible decision that would be permanently separated from our children or deported.”
When immigration authorities take over as undocumented parents of our birth children, they are at risk of losing custody of their children. Without legal documents or custody outlines who will care for the leftover child, children can enter the U.S. foster care system, making it difficult for parents to restore custody of their children in the future.
After her birthday, the girl had her first checkup in Monterrey this week.
Denisse Molina, humanitarian outreach coordinator for the Texas Civil Rights Program, said she spent her “two exhausted days, countless calls and bounces between hospital departments” to ensure medical appointments and arranges the girl’s MRI.
"No one - especially children in need - should not fight for basic care," Molina told NBC News in a statement Thursday.
According to the mother of the child and the advocates of the family, while this temporary solution is bringing some relief to the family, regular check-ups are crucial.
After learning of the diagnosis through an interpreter, the mother said the child was diagnosed with a brain tumor last year and underwent surgery. But Woodward said that since contacting the girl’s doctor and obtaining medical records while the family pursues humanitarian parole, the cause of the tumor was “unnamed ‘novel’ status.”
Few medical experts can effectively monitor such situations. The girl's doctor is someone with the necessary expertise. Her doctor told the Texas Civil Rights Program that the girl needs to have a scan and check every three months.
The surgery that saved the girl’s life last year gave her some lasting side effects. Her mother said in March that the swelling of her brain has not completely disappeared, which has caused difficulties in speech and mobility on the right side of the body.
Before evacuating her family from the United States, the girl frequently checked her doctor to monitor her recovery, attend rehabilitation treatment classes and take medications to prevent convulsions.
In Mexico, the family was able to enroll four children later this month while applying for humanitarian parole at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.
According to the USCIS website, applicants can show urgency by determining reasons for calling for immediate action in the United States, including critical care, or needing to visit, assist or support a sick relative.
"Our hope is that members of Congress will be aware of this particular case and support our humanitarian parole requirement for families," Garza said.