For the second time in less than a week, a Venezuelan physician has been detained in South Texas as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The latest doctor, Rubeliz Bolivar, who worked in a hospital emergency room in the Rio Grande Valley, a federally designated underserved medical area, was detained on Saturday after checking into a flight to California. She had planned to join her husband for their asylum interview, scheduled for next week.
Dr. Bolivar, who, according to her husband, has a valid work permit, was traveling with their 5-year-old daughter, who is a U.S. citizen. Dr. Bolivar has lived in the United States for a decade.
On Monday, another Venezuelan physician, Ezequiel Veliz, was detained by Border Patrol agents at a checkpoint in South Texas after being stopped while driving to Houston.
Senior officials with the Department of Homeland Security, after a chaotic immigration operation in Minneapolis that resulted in the death of two Americans and the ouster of Kristi Noem as the agency’s secretary, have said that they were shifting toward more targeted enforcement. That type of enforcement is often less visible, and focused on detaining criminals.
But Jodi Goodwin, an immigration lawyer in South Texas, said that the arrests of the physicians showed that “indiscriminate” enforcement persisted under the administration’s mass deportation campaign.
D.H.S. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The detention of Dr. Bolivar, a resident in emergency medicine at the South Texas Health System in McAllen, drew swift condemnation from leaders and physicians in the region. They said it undermined health care in an impoverished region struggling with a physician shortage.
“Dr. Bolivar did everything right,” said Victor Haddad, mayor pro-tem of McAllen, in a statement. “She followed the rules. She dedicated her life to healing others,” he said.
Beyond her work in emergency medicine, Dr. Bolivar has appeared on public forums to educate families about diabetes, heat stroke prevention and emergency health awareness.
“Dr. Bolivar is one of the finest residents we have had the privilege to work with,” said Dr. Michael Menowsky, who supervises residents in the emergency medicine program at the South Texas Health System.
“She is brilliant, dedicated and beloved by patients and staff alike,” he said. “Her detention is heartbreaking and deeply disturbing.”
Dr. Francisco Torres, another supervising physician, said that South Texas couldn’t afford to lose doctors like Dr. Bolivar.
“Detaining doctors who are serving underserved populations is beyond reckless — it is cruel,” he said.
Dr. Bolivar and her daughter, Milena, had tickets for a 5:40 a.m. flight departing McAllen for Santa Barbara, Calif.
According to her husband, Milenko Faria, who said he had spoken with his wife from detention, Dr. Bolivar and their child were asked if they were citizens by Customs and Border Protection officers stationed at the airport.
“She showed them her work permit,” said Mr. Faria, who noted it was valid until 2030. “They told her, ‘That is not valid. No documents from Venezuela are valid.’”
Dr. Bolivar told them, he said, that she had pending immigration cases, for asylum and a green card, through her husband. They detained her anyway, he said.
The New York Times has previously reported that many foreign professionals, including dozens of physicians, have been pulled off the job in recent months because they come from one of 39 countries, including Venezuela, that are on a Trump administration travel-ban list.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has frozen decisions on their pending immigration cases, including for visa extensions and green cards, forcing employers to place them on administrative leave.
Mr. Faria said that he entered the United States as a tourist after fleeing Venezuela in 2015. He was an opposition activist in that country, he said, and had been threatened by the secret police at gunpoint. He applied for asylum.
His wife, a physician in Venezuela, joined him a year later, and she was eligible, according to the law, to be included as a derivative on his application.
They lived in Santa Maria, Calif., northwest of Santa Barbara, where Mr. Faria works for a company that manufactures petri dishes, tubes and other medical devices. After Dr. Bolivar gave birth, she studied and passed exams to become licensed as a physician in the United States.
She was accepted into a residency program in McAllen, Texas, and she moved there with their daughter. Mr. Faria remained in California.
Mr. Faria’s employer also agreed to sponsor him for a green card, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. The couple, therefore, had two pending immigration cases, which is not uncommon.
That didn’t matter on Saturday when Dr. Bolivar was stopped.
Mr. Faria said that their child remains with her mother. “To get our baby back we need a lawyer,” he said, adding that he was trying to hire one in Texas as quickly as possible.
Miriam Jordan reports from a grass roots perspective on immigrants and their impact on the demographics, society and economy of the United States.
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