Donald Trump’s administration may have condemned a 4-year-old girl with a rare bowel condition to death by terminating her legal status as part of the president’s crackdown on immigration, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.
The young girl, who was identified by her initials S.G.V. by the Times, and her family were granted humanitarian permission to enter the U.S. legally from Mexico in 2023, so that she could receive treatment for short bowel syndrome, which prevents her from absorbing enough nutrients to remain healthy.
Deysi Vargas, 28, was committed to getting her daughter better treatment than they had received in Mexico City, where her daughter had been kept alive but inadequate care prevented her condition from improving. An appointment in Tijuana they’d made through the CBP One app was their best hope.
“God knew she needed better treatment,” Vargas told the Times. “When we got to the entrance, they saw her and asked us if we needed medical help.”
But last month, the family received a notice telling them to leave the country—threatening the child’s access to the care she needs to live.
In a letter requested by the family, Dr. John Asenault, who treats S.G.V. every six weeks at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, said that any interruption in her daily nutrition regimen could prove “fatal within a matter of days.”
Arsenault said that patients such as S.G.V., who use an IV-administered nutrition system at home called Total Parenteral Nutrition, are typically not permitted to leave the country at all.
S.G.V.’s treatment is incredibly complex. She must be hooked up to an intravenous feeding system for 14 hours a night, and must be administered additional nutrition for an hour, four times a day.
The family’s attorney, Rebecca Brown, of the pro bono legal firm Public Counsel, said that she believed the family’s status had been revoked by mistake.
“This is a textbook example of medical need,” Brown told the Times. “This child will die and there’s no sense for that to happen. It would just be a cruel sacrifice.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services declined the Times’ request for comment.
In April, the Trump administration deported a mother to Honduras, alongside her 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son, the latter of whom had been diagnosed with cancer. The Trump administration claimed that the mother had requested her children be removed from the country with her, despite her attorney’s insistence that she wished for her children, both citizens, to remain in the U.S.
Trump’s immigration crackdown has already proved deadly: At least seven immigrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody died in the president’s first 100 days in office.
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