1 week ago
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In a lawyer's bureau successful downtown Los Angeles, a small miss sits astatine a table made for adults - tiny trainers dangling disconnected the borderline of a swivel chair.
She's surrounded by dozens of TV cameras but has nary knowing of wherefore she's abruptly the centre of attention.
Sofia, whose existent sanction we are not using, is simply a gravely sick four-year-old caught successful the crosshairs of Donald Trump's sweeping and often indiscriminate migration policy.
The White House has ordered she leaves the US immediately, but Sofia's doctors astatine the Children's Hospital Los Angeles accidental that - if she is sent backmost to her location state of Mexico and her attraction stops - she could dice wrong days.
As Sofia places rainbow stickers cautiously successful a publication and plays snap, the lawyers warring for her to stay successful the US talk astatine a podium connected her behalf.
"We're sending them to die," Gina Amato Lough, a lawyer for the pro bono steadfast Public Counsel, says.
"That's not justness and it doesn't marque america immoderate safer. We cannot fto our state crook its backmost connected this child."
Sofia wears a backpack for 14 hours astatine nighttime and 4 hours during the time which keeps her live - containing nutrients she can't sorb naturally.
It is cutting-edge healthcare lone disposable successful the US.
She was calved with abbreviated bowel syndrome, a debilitating and life-threatening information that meant she spent astir of the archetypal 2 years of her beingness successful hospital.
Under the Biden administration, Sofia and her parent Deysi entered the US legally successful July 2023 - granted humanitarian parole to entree aesculapian attraction for 2 years.
But successful April - 3 months into Donald Trump's presidency - the 28-year-old received a missive from the Department of Homeland Security, informing her that the family's close to enactment successful the state was being revoked.
"It is clip to permission the United States," the archetypal enactment of the missive reads.
"Even earlier getting the letters, I would perceive successful the quality however galore radical are being deported, adjacent with humanitarian paroles, and I disquieted a lot," Deysi says.
"I was ever walking down the thoroughfare looking implicit my shoulder, determination is truthful overmuch fearfulness and truthful overmuch anxiety, it's precise hard.
"It's ever successful my caput that my girl tin die. It whitethorn not dependable real, but it is truly what volition hap if my girl is not connected to her treatment."
Sofia's lawyers pass that if determination is an interruption to her treatment, her doctors accidental it could beryllium "fatal wrong days".
The lawyers person written to officials wrong the Trump administration, but accidental they haven't heard backmost yet.
"It seems arsenic if cipher noticed that this kid is 4 years aged and that she volition dice without her treatment," Ms Lough says.
"And not lone person they not responded, but they person continued sending notices to the household verifying that their presumption has been cancelled and that they are required to permission the United States immediately.
"Sofia's doctors person been wide that she volition dice wrong days. Deporting this household nether these conditions is not lone unlawful, it constitutes a motivation nonaccomplishment that violates the basal tenets of humanity and decency."
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In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said: "Any reporting that [the family] are actively being deported are FALSE. This household applied for humanitarian parole connected May 14, 2025, and the exertion is inactive being considered."
When approached by Sky News, Trump's borderline czar Tom Homan denied circumstantial cognition of Sofia's case, but said helium would instruct the White House property bureau to "look into" the circumstances.
For now, Sofia is simply a tiny awesome of the quality casualties of often unbending and ruthless migration policy.
English (US) ·