Preschooler being deported by Trump could 'die within days' if her treatment getss cut off

Daily Mail​

a day ago

A young girl living in California with a life-threatening health condition is at risk of death in just a few days after President Trump ordered her family to be deported to Mexico.
The four-year-old girl, referred to by her initials SGV, is receiving life-saving care in Bakersfield, California where she lives with her parents who were allowed to immigrate to the U.S. to treat their daughter's short bowel syndrome.
The condition prevents the body from properly absorbing nutrients, leading to malnutrition, bone disease, and kidney complications. It can be deadly if left untreated
The family was given humanitarian approval in 2023 to enter the country after doctors in their native Mexico reportedly failed to properly treat the four-year-old, leaving her with repeat blood infections and, as a result of multiple surgeries gone wrong, a severely shortened bowel.
SGV's condition has improved drastically since beginning treatment at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, where she has near-constant care for her shortened bowel.
Her parents have been hopeful, watching their daughter lead a near-normal life, going to school and living at home with her parents finally, not in a hospital.
However, last month, her mother, Deysi Vargas, received a deportation order from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The letter read: 'It is in your best interest to avoid deportation and leave the United States of your own accord.'
SGV is currently fed through a process called Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN), a way of feeding a person through an IV when they can't eat or absorb enough nutrients by mouth. Her doctor says forcing her out of the country would disrupt her treatment, and 'could be fatal within a matter of days.'
Dr John Arsenault of Children's, who sees the young girl every six weeks, told the Los Angeles Times: '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.'
The family's lawyer has petitioned the court to extend their temporary humanitarian legal status, which can be valid from a few months up to several years, based on SGV's medical needs. They believe the Vargas family's legal status was terminated by mistake.
SVG was born around a month premature and was immediately admitted to a intensive care unit at a Cancun hospital where she underwent six surgeries to fix an intestinal blockage. However, doctors cut too much of her small intestine away.
She became emaciated at times, her body unable to absorb nutrients and vitamins from food, leading to malnutrition.
After seven months of treatment in Cancun, SVG's doctor suggested the family relocate to Mexico City where she could receive a higher level of care. But that was no better.
Vargas told the LA Times that nurses would administer the wrong medication or speed up her nutrition system so that she immediately peed it out and became severely dehydrated.
Another time, Vargas claimed, SVG threw up overnight, and no one cleaned her up.
Then, Vargas learned the Biden Administration had begun using the app CBP One to provide appointments with border agents to receive admission to the United States on humanitarian grounds.
Vargas told the LA Times that her husband claimed their immigration appointment on July 31, 2023, that he had been kidnapped, extorted by a Mexican cartel and had recently received death threats.
She said that border patrol agents at the Tijuana-San Diego border looked at SVG and knew she needed medical help.
That same day she was taken to Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego, where she was treated for a year before being transferred to one of the country's best gastroenterology programs at Children's Hospital Los Angeles.
Vargas' husband has since held down odd jobs and gigs, such as driving for Uber. Vargas found steady work as a cleaner at a restaurant.
The family finally achieved a sense of stability and normalcy in their lives, Vargas said. Meanwhile, SVG was also doing better.
SVG was hooked up to feeding tubes overnight, in the morning, and brought one with her to school in a backpack for lunchtime.
She was no longer thin and malnourished and she was living at home with her family, not in a hospital like she had been before.
Now, the family faces the prospect of SVG regressing as the Trump administration continued to crack down on it's existing humanitarian parole policy that it believes was too lenient under the Biden administration.
President Joe Biden used humanitarian parole, which also allowed people to legally work in the country, more than any other president.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court earlier this month to allow it to end humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
It is not clear whether the revocation of the family's parole status is legal or if it will be halted by a judge, as their lawyer is attempting to do. But already, Vargas' work authorization has been revoked.
Her family now faces the prospect of returning to the care in Mexico that the family claim injured SGV in the first place, which is a terrifying prospect for her mother.
Vargas said: 'I know the treatment they have there for her is not adequate, because we already lived it.
'Those were bad times. Here she is living the most normal life possible.'
The Trump administration entered office with the promise of deporting undocumented immigrants with a criminal background, but immigrants with legal status have been caught up in the dragnet.
The administration has acknowledged a mistaken deportation only once, that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident, but has refused to follow a judge's orders to 'facilitate his return' to the U.S..
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that aimed to tighten immigration enforcement and allow people entry to the U.S. 'on only a case-by-case basis,' a 180-degree turn from the Biden Administration's policies that expanded humanitarian parole authority for refugees and those facing life-threatening medical crises.
Thousands of immigrants who entered the country using the Biden Administration's CBP One app received deportation notices around the same time that Vargas did.
If people do not leave on their own volition, the notice said, without offering a timeline or indication that they will be arrested, 'the federal government will find you.'