10-Year-Old Girl With Cerebral Palsy Out Of Immigration Jail, Back With Parents, Ready To Take Your Job

Home just in time for today's civil war, too!

 Rosa Maria Hernandez, the little girl who the Border Patrol arrested the moment she got out of a hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, because she had the gall to need emergency surgery while undocumented, was released Friday from a detention center for unaccompanied minors and reunited with her family. It is unclear whether the little girl has recovered sufficiently to serve as an Antifa Super Solder in today's scheduled overthrow of the U.S. Government.

The ACLU sued the government for her release last week, but they're still not satisfied, according to a press release:  

“Rosa Maria is finally free. We’re thrilled that she can go home to heal surrounded by her family's love and support,” said Michael Tan, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Despite our relief, Border Patrol’s decision to target a young girl at a children’s hospital remains unconscionable. No child should go through this trauma and we are working to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Rosa Maria was arrested October 25 when Border Patrol agents at a checkpoint stopped the ambulance that was taking her from Laredo to Driscoll Children's Hospital in Corpus Christi for emergency gallbladder surgery; because Rosa Maria and her parents are undocumented, the girl was accompanied to the hospital by her cousin, Aurora Cantu, who is a US citizen. Agents held the ambulance and the gravely ill girl for about 30 minutes before following it to the hospital, where they hovered outside the operating room and then Rosa Maria's hospital room; before she went to surgery, they tried to convince her family to allow her immediate deportation to a hospital in Mexico, an offer they declined.

Once Rosa Maria was recovered enough to leave the hospital, agents arrested her and placed her in a San Antoniodetention facility"shelter" for unaccompanied minors who arrive in the US without their parents. The agency later explained they had to treat her as unaccompanied since only her cousin was with her, so maybe she was part of a human trafficking scheme. Yes, they really said that, even though Ms. Cantu had given the feds information on how to contact Rosa Maria's parents. Further, the government insisted that the hospital arrest didn't violate rules against immigration enforcement actions at "sensitive locations" like schools and hospitals, since the enforcement action had actually begun at the highway checkpoint. Yes, they really said that, too.

The Washington Post reports the family's lawyers say the family has been notified that Rosa Maria could face deportation, but no formal proceedings have been initiated in immigration court.

And here's a detail we hadn't known:

While she was at the shelter, Tan said, the girl’s parents told her she was in a hospital, to avoid frightening her with the prospect of deportation. She has the cognitive capacity of a 6-year-old child, and had never been away from her family before.

Still, during a visit with her father, Tan said, the girl burst into tears and pointed to the healing wound from her operation and asked why she couldn’t go home.

“She’s profoundly traumatized,” Tan said.

If we may digress a moment, perhaps this story should be read to Republican supporters of Ed Gillespie in Virginia, who are very upset by a campaign ad portraying Trump and Gillespie supporters as thugs who scare Latino children and give them nightmares. Virginia Rs have been saying with perfectly straight faces they have no idea why a Latino political action committee would ever suggest such a thing, even as the Republicans run their own ads saying that if Democrat Ralph Northam is elected, MS-13 will rape and kill Virginians at will. And they wonder why teachers report that little minority kids are terrified of Trump and his supporters? Must be because the kids have been propagandized.

In any case, Rosa Maria is home with her parents in Laredo, she doesn't have to be told that a detention center is a hospital, and soon she'll be back at school where she has excellent special education teachers who love her too.

Here's a crazy idea: let's make an America where no other little kids have to have nightmares about big scary men in uniforms coming to take them away.

 Yr Wonkette is supported by you, the people. Please click here to help us pay our bills. And if you'd like to help out migrant families in south Texas, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which helps out people with a wide range of legal needs, is always grateful.(TRLA isn't involved in Rosa Maria's case, but they do great work and have the best homepage of any nonprofit we've seen: )

 
 Best. Rabble-Rousers. EVER.

[ ACLU / WaPo ]