Attorneys challenge immigration arrest, detention of child treated for cancer

NBC News

2 days ago

Attorneys are pleading for the release from immigration detention of a 6-year-old boy treated for cancer of the blood and bone marrow, who is being held in Texas with his mother and sibling.
The boy, his mother and his 9-year-old sibling, originally from Honduras, were seized after the three attended their May 29 immigration hearing in Los Angeles last month. Attorneys say the family could be deported within days because their attempt to secure asylum in the U.S. was cut short.
Their arrest is one of many carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at immigration courts to shuffle more immigrants into a sped-up removal from the country known as expedited removal. Many are like the mother and her children and were granted legal entry to the U.S. under the Biden administration.
The Trump administration has directed judges to dismiss the cases of immigrants who have been in the country less than two years, so ICE can more quickly remove them from the country.
As attorneys try to free the family from detention and get medical care for the child with cancer, they also are challenging the Trump administration's growing practice of making arrests at immigration courts. Attorneys believe this is the first case to challenge the administration's use of this tactic on children.
'A federal district court has already ruled that the ICE courthouse arrest policy announced last month is illegal and unconstitutional and I think applying it to children is particularly abhorrent and unconscionable,' said attorney Elora Mukherjee, who is part of the team representing the family.
Last week, several groups filed a lawsuit challenging the arrest of Oliver Eloy Mata Velasquez, originally from Venezuela, after his immigration court hearing in Buffalo, New York. He also had entered the country legally through the CBP One process.
In this case, the mother had been instructed to bring her children, who are out of school, to the immigration hearing, said Kate Gibson Kumar, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project who is also representing the family.
'They arrested the family in the hallway as they were leaving ... The children were really scared. They were crying,' Gibson Kumar said.
The family was arrested and then made to wait in another part of the court building. Attorneys said that during that time, an agent lifted his shirt as he was changing and one of the children, the 6-year-old boy, saw his gun. He became frightened and urinated on himself, and remained in the soaked clothing for hours, said Mukherjee.
There were no clothes the boy's size until the next morning, when the family was about to be put on a plane and flown to Dilley, Texas, a detention facility near San Antonio, she said.
The 6-year-old, identified as N.M.Z in a habeas corps complaint, was diagnosed in Honduras with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when he was 3 and has been undergone two of the required two-and-a-half years of treatment, according to the court filing. He missed a June 5 medical appointment because he was in detention.
Because it is acute, the cancer can progress rapidly without treatment. It affects the blood cells and immune system. It is considered curable in most children.
However, attorneys said that the detention may be taking a toll on the children's health. Gibson Kumar said the children are really scared, are crying daily and barely eating.
Mukherjee said that when she visited the family earlier this week, the 6-year-old exhibited some conditions that are known symptoms of his cancer.
"He has easy bruising ... His right leg had a lot of black-and-blue marks on it, his left leg had black and blue marks on it, he had black-and-blue marks on his arms. He has bone pain occasionally, He has lost his appetite. These are all pretty concerning things," Mukherjee said.
In an email, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said the "minor child has not undergone chemotherapy in over a year, and has been seen regularly by medical personnel since arriving" at Dilley.
McLaughlin said that detained individuals are at no time denied emergency care and any implication that ICE would deny a child needed medical care is "flatly FALSE" and "an insult to federal law enforcement officers."
"ICE always prioritizes the health, safety and well-being of all detainees in its care," McLaughlin stated.
Illnesses of children held at Dilley in past years, as well as the 2018 death of a toddler after release from Dilley, have raised concerns about previous medical care for children confined there.
The family was paroled into the U.S. on Oct. 26, 2024, through the CBP One app. They fled Honduras after being subjected to "imminent and menacing death threats," according to the habeas corpus petition.
Once in the country, the U.S. government determined they were not a flight risk and not a danger to the community. The mother was not put on an electronic monitor. DHS gave them a notice to appear at the May 29 court hearing to pursue their claims for humanitarian relief, Mukherjee said.
Attorneys have appealed the dismissal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Justice Department. McLaughlin said that because the family has 'chosen to appeal their case — which had already been thrown out by an immigration judge' — the mother and children will remain in ICE custody until the case is resolved.
The attorneys said the family was becoming deeply rooted in their community. The children attended a local public school that focused on the arts and had made friends. The 6-year-old loved playing soccer in the local park. The family attended church every Sunday and they were learning English, they said.
"This is that family that was literally trying to do everything right and the forced disappearances of so many of our neighbors and community members, especially those who are law-abiding, should shock us all," Mukherjee said.
The attorneys are arguing that the administration has illegally placed the mother and children in expedited removal and should at least offer them a chance for bond.
The family should be in what is considered full-removal proceedings, which provides a longer, multistep process leading to a trial opportunity where they could submit evidence supporting their claim and present witnesses, Mukherjee said.
"As DHS determined when it paroled them into the United States, the family is not a flight risk nor are they a danger to the community," the attorneys said in the habeas corpus petition, adding that their detention is unjustified. "Accordingly, the family is being detained in violation of their constitutional right to Due Process under the Fifth Amendment, and they should be released immediately."
On June 21, the government conducted a credible fear interview — to determine if they fear persecution, harm or death if returned to Honduras — but Mukharjee said she was not informed of the hearing. Mukharjee said this happened even though ICE was well aware she and others were representing the family.
"There are extremely, serious concerns about the government illegally subjecting them to a credible fear interview and denying of the opportunity to have counsel on the line, when DHS has been on notice for weeks that I'm representing the family," Mukharjee said.