Nearly a year ago, an 11-year-old U.S. citizen girl's treatment fora rare brain tumorwas interrupted whenher parents were deported to Mexico. Her parents and her four siblings, three of whom are also U.S. citizens, have spent the past year living in a dangerous part of Mexico and have seen her recovery stall as they fight to get her access to care.
"It's been a really difficult year," the girl's mother told NBC News in Spanish this month as she choked up. "It's hard not to break down."
The family's quest to return to the United States is now reaching a critical point, the mother said. In Mexico, without continuous access to the medical care the girl needs, the brain tumor that once threatened her life could redevelop.
NBC News is withholding the name of the mother and the rest of the family members, since they were deported to an area in Mexico known for kidnapping U.S. citizens.
When U.S. doctors reviewed the results ofthe girl's last MRI scan from May, they found her brain isn't regenerating, an important part of recovery that helps restore lost neurological functions such as motor skills and speech. That means "there is a high risk that the tumor can come back," the mother said, explaining her conversation with the physicians.
It also makes it more urgent for her daughter to be back in the U.S., so her doctors can keep her under close observation, she added.
Slightly struggling with her words, the 11-year-old girl described experiencing worsening headaches and persistent body pain, particularly in a foot and a hand, in a brief phone conversation with NBC News this month.
"My head hurts so much, my foot, my hand," she said in Spanish. "I want to heal."
The mother said her daughter has also been experiencing seizures more frequently, a concern that often keeps her up at night.
To appropriately monitor the girl's condition, her specialist doctors in the U.S. recommend that she get an MRI scan every three months. Since she arrived in Mexico almost a year ago, the girl has been able to get only one.
For months, the family has been anxiously waiting to hear back from immigration authorities about thehumanitarian parole request they filedback in June 2025 that could allow the parents, who are undocumented, and one noncitizen sibling to enter and live in the U.S. temporarily to assist the 11-year-old as she receives medical treatment.
While humanitarian parole requests are processed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, applications submitted by previously deported people are decided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. USCIS and ICE did not comment in this specific case.
Attorney Danny Woodward of the Texas Civil Rights Project, the legal advocacy and litigation organization representing the family, said humanitarian parole can be granted "to anybody regardless of their immigration history."
"It's at the discretion of the government, and this case really merits it," Woodward said.
Medical records Woodward obtained as part of the family's efforts to win humanitarian parole show the girl's brain tumor was caused by an "unnamed 'novel' condition." That's what makes it a rare tumor that is difficult to treat, her mother said in Spanish.
The mother said she's "still waiting for a miracle" and hopes to be granted humanitarian parole. She said the health care options available to her daughter in Mexico are extremely limited.
U.S. citizens including minors can't access care through Mexico's public health system and are often required topay up frontto receive emergency medical services. For the family, the remaining alternative is to receive care through private coverage and pay out of pocket for medical bills, which the mother said they can't afford.
"It feels awful," the mother said as she recalled experiencing those limitations firsthand one day when her daughter began convulsing. She called for an ambulance, but dispatchers told her they wouldn't send one because her daughter is "technically not from Mexico." The mother ended up borrowing a car and driving 2½ hours to get her daughter to the hospital.
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There, medical staff members said they didn't understand her daughter's condition well enough to effectively treat her and recommended that she be returned to the U.S. to get treatment.
"The entire time we were in the United States, we always respected the country, respected the people, maintained good moral character with everyone and helped in any way we could," the mother said. "Not having access to anything now, it feels like the world is falling apart."
A drive to the hospital leads to deportation
The family's immigration plight began on Feb. 3, 2025, after the then 10-year-old girl woke up dizzy, with headaches and body pain. Her mother said the worrisome symptoms came exactly a year after surgeons performed an emergency procedure to remove a tumor on her daughter's brain.
Fearing her symptoms signaled setbacks in her recovery, the parents piled their children, ages 17, 14, 11, 10 and 8, into a car and rushed from the Rio Grande Valley area where they lived to a hospital in Houston, where specialist doctors had been treating the girl's condition since the operation.
But the family never made it to the Houston hospital. Border Patrol officers detained them when they stopped at a mandatoryimmigration checkpointin Texas.
Before President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, the family had succesfully passed through that checkpoint several times before, Woodward said. They would present letters from the Houston hospital and from an immigration attorney, as well as the children's birth certificates.
"This is a family with no criminal record that was driving to Houston specifically to get medical care for their daughter who had a brain tumor removed," said Woodward, the attorney.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment, but the agency previously told NBC News the parents had previously been "givenexpedited removal orders,"adding that when someone "chooses to disregard them, they will face the consequences."
The family's departure to Mexico has weighed heavily on their eldest son, an18-year-old U.S. citizen who remains in Texasand who sends his now 11-year-old sister the seizure medications she needs.
The siblings in Mexico told NBC News they can't wait to be reunited with him. The youngest, who is 8, said he misses eating pizza and playing games with his big brother.
The 11-year-old said she misses her eldest brother, as well as her specialist doctors and her friends from school.
The girl's 14-year-old sister broke down describing how stressful it has been to see her younger sister not getting "the proper treatment and medication" in Mexico. The 17-year-old brother said it was hard adapting to a new life in a very rural part of Mexico as he tried to finish school online.
"It's been quite stressful being in an environment where I'm not used to being in," he said.
The family's case was amongthe first involving the detentionsand removals of U.S. citizen children, including minors withserious medical conditions, as part of their parents' deportations during the early days of Trump's second term. Several other cases emerged during that time, including those of three other U.S. citizen children, ages 7, 4 and 2, who weresent to Honduras with their undocumented mothersin April. The 4-year-oldhad Stage 4 cancer.
DHS has saidit doesn't deport American children. It instead asks deported parents whether they prefer to be removed with their U.S. citizen children rather than be separated.
Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said "it just isn't a choice — this is all forced upon them."
Parents on the verge of deportation can risk losing custody of their U.S.-born children if there aren't clearpower-of-attorney documents or guardianshipsoutlining who will take care of the children left behind. Otherwise the children go into the U.S. foster care system, making it harder for their parents to regain custody in the future.
The 11-year-old said that when she's feeling down, one of her favorite things to do is sing karaoke to the tunes of her favorite artists, Carín León and K-pop Demon Hunters,especially their electric hit song "Golden."It reminds her of joyous times, back in school with her friends and the life she left behind in Texas.
