The Sanchezes, who are undocumented immigrants, were apprehended while taking their son to emergency surgery. Immigrant advocates fear this is the new normal under the Trump administration.
When 2-month-old Isaac Enrique Sanchez was diagnosed with pyloric stenosis, a condition that causes vomiting, dehydration and weight loss in infants, his parents were told that their son's condition was curable. The problem was that no hospital in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas had a pediatric surgery team capable of performing the operation on his stomach.
To make Isaac well, Oscar and Irma Sanchez would need to take their infant son to Driscoll Children's Hospital, in Corpus Christi, Texas. It was just a couple of hours up the highway, but for them it was a world away.
The Sanchezes, who are undocumented, would need to pass a Border Patrol checkpoint.
"The nurse told us we had to go there," Oscar says in Spanish. "We said we couldn't go."
While they pondered their predicament in a Harlingen, Texas, hospital, a Border Patrol agent showed up in the waiting room — Oscar Sanchez suspects a nurse turned them in — and said he could arrange for officers to escort the parents through the checkpoint to Corpus. But the agent said when they arrived, they would be arrested and put into deportation proceedings. The couple agreed.
The events that followed at the Corpus Christi hospital are the latest developments in a national controversy over so-called sensitive locations. Under President Barack Obama, the Department of Homeland Security adopted a policy that immigration agents should avoid enforcement actions at hospitals, schools, churches and public demonstrations unless there are special circumstances.
http://www.npr.org/2017/09/20/552339976/border-patrol-arrests-parents-while-infant-awaits-serious-operation