In mid-March 2025, social media users alleged a 10-year-old girl recovering from brain cancer was deported to Mexico along with her parents.
Some posts — including a Facebook post by Democratic U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado — claimed the child was a U.S. citizen with parents in the country illegally; others said she and her parents were on their way to an "emergency medical checkup" when border officials detained them. One post on X about the girl's purported situation has nearly 70,000 likes as of this writing. Many blamed U.S. President Donald Trump.
This 10-year-old U.S. citizen, who was traveling to a medical checkup with a swollen brain after recovering from cancer, was deported by Tom Homan's pathetic operation because her parents were not documented.
Nothing says "greatest country in the world" like kicking out a sick… pic.twitter.com/pryUMPqu7H— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) March 13, 2025
These posts originated from a March 12, 2025, NBC News story by Nicole Acevedo. In the story (archived), Acevedo reported that a 10-year-old U.S. citizen recovering from brain cancer surgery was removed to Mexico along with her parents, who
The Texas Civil Rights Project, which is representing the family, said the NBC News story was largely accurate, aside from the family's specific residence in Texas and details of the child's medical condition. It was not possible to independently verify the reporting with the family in question. An unnamed "senior official" at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, said via email that "the facts as reported are inaccurate."
"When someone is given expedited removal orders and chooses to disregard them, they will face the consequences as outlined by the expedited removal process for individuals with removal orders. For privacy reasons, we cannot comment on the specifics of this case," the official said. NBC received a similar statement.
Acevedo did not immediately return requests for comment.
The family's story
According to NBC News, "immigration authorities removed the girl and four of her American siblings from Texas on Feb. 4, when they deported their undocumented parents." Border officials first detained the family in February when they were on their way to "an emergency medical checkup" in Houston, where the child's specialist doctors are based.
NBC News also reported that the child was "diagnosed with brain cancer last year and underwent surgery to remove the tumor," but the "swelling on the girl's brain is still not fully gone."
An attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project,
"The parents are struggling to get her medication from the United States for financial and logistical reasons," he said. "She also needs follow-up examinations and testing every few months, which is up now. The hospital has been calling to schedule. Her condition fortunately does not appear to have deteriorated in the past few weeks, but she struggles with speaking and moving one side of her body. She is stressed out and her parents are very worried about her."
He noted that the family consists of two parents and six children, five of whom are U.S. citizens and one of whom is a Mexican citizen; four, including the Mexican citizen, were removed to Mexico with the family. The eldest, a U.S. citizen, remains in the United States and is separated from the family.
The Texas Civil Rights Project is a legal advocacy group that has worked with the ACLU and has made headlines in the past for its lawsuit against the state of Texas for denying birth certificates to U.S.-born children of parents in the country illegally. The project's website features a petition to send a message to Congress about "the Hernandez family" — but the names used by the project are pseudonyms, according to Woodward.
Woodward could not provide Snopes with medical documentation verifying the child's condition due to privacy concerns but said the project was able to review "medical and other documents, and spoke to several other people with direct knowledge of events, and found them to confirm the family's story."
Detention and deportation of the family
According to NBC News, the parents had passed through the same immigration checkpoint before without issue and had no criminal history, aside from "lacking immigration status in the U.S." (Being present in the United States without legal authorization is often a civil, not criminal, offense, depending on mode of entry into the country.)
In previous occasions, the parents showed letters from their doctors and lawyers to the officers at the checkpoint to get through.
But in early February, the letters weren't enough. When they stopped at the checkpoint, they were arrested after the parents were unable to show legal immigration documentation. The mother, who spoke exclusively to NBC News, said she tried explaining her daughter's circumstances to the officers, but "they weren't interested in hearing that."
Woodward said the family was detained Feb. 3, spent the night in Donna Processing Center, a temporary detention facility, and removed to Mexico on Feb. 4.
NBC News' story omitted details such as the family's faces and their names due to safety concerns. According to the outlet, "they were deported to an area in Mexico that is known for kidnapping U.S. citizens." However, the outlet also released a video of the mother provided by the Texas Civil Rights Project in a follow-up story, which appeared to match details reported by NBC News. Here is the outlet's translation of the mother's comments in the story (archived), which Snopes verified as an accurate translation:
"We have made this trip across Texas several times to take our daughter to the hospital so that she can receive the medical attention, which is what keeps her well," her mother said in her video message. "That's what keeps her safe."
"This time, we were detained, held, and we faced the worst decision, an impossible one, to be permanently separated from our children or to be deported together," she said.
[…]
"We are now deported to Mexico without access to the urgent medical care our daughter needs. Our children, including American citizens, have been forced to face a crisis that no child should have to face," the woman said in the video.
Legality of deporting a 10-year-old U.S. citizen
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's directive on detained parents, updated in 2022, says ICE must help facilitate "efforts to make arrangements" for children of detained parents who are pending removal from the United States.
These provisions may include the [parent or guardian's] attempt to arrange temporary guardianship for their minor child(ren) or incapacitated adult for whom they serve as legal guardian if they will be remaining in the United States, or—where the [parent or guardian] requests reunification with their minor child(ren) or incapacitated adult for whom they serve as legal guardian prior to removal—to obtain travel documents for the minor child(ren) or incapacitated adult to accompany them.
Thus, parents may choose to take their children with them or to be separated from their children, as the mother of the 10-year-old girl said in her video statement. More details about the family's specific immigration case are not available.
Under former President Joe Biden, immigration enforcement officials were not allowed in or near sensitive locations, such as hospitals. A January 2025 directive from Trump's administration rescinded all guidance preventing immigration officials from arresting people in such locations. However, it is unclear how close the family was to its intended destination, nor is it clear whether policy has changed around arresting people at checkpoints while en route to medical appointments, as the family in question was.