After a year in Mexico, recovery stalls for US citizen girl with rare brain tumor, deported mother says

About a year ago, an 11-year-old American citizen girl’s treatment for a brain tumor was interrupted when her parents were deported to Mexico. His parents and four siblings, three of whom are also US citizens, have spent the past year living in dangerous Mexico and have seen his recovery stalled as they fight to get him care.

“It’s been a really tough year,” the girl’s mother told NBC News in Spanish this month when she was strangled. “It’s hard not to eat.”

The family’s desire to return to the United States has reached a critical point, the mother said. In Mexico, without the continued medical attention a girl needs, her once life-threatening brain tumor can grow back.

NBC News is withholding the name of the mother and the rest of the family, as they are being deported from Mexico, a region known for kidnapping US citizens.

When US doctors reviewed the results of the girl’s last MRI from May, they found that her brain was not regenerating, which is an important part of recovery that helps restore lost sensory functions such as movement and speech. That means “there is a high risk that the tumor can come back,” said the mother, explaining her conversation with the doctor.

It also makes it more urgent for her daughter to return to the US, so her doctors can keep her under close observation, he added.

Struggling a little with her words, the 11-year-old girl described her worsening headaches and constant body aches, especially in her feet and hands, in a brief phone interview with NBC News this month.

“My head hurts a lot, my foot, my hand,” he said in Spanish. “I want to live.”

The mother said her daughter has been suffering from seizures, an anxiety disorder that often keeps her awake at night.

In order to properly monitor the girl’s condition, her specialist doctors in the US recommend that she get an MRI scan every three months. Since arriving in Mexico almost a year ago, this girl has been able to find only one.

For months, the family has been eagerly waiting to hear a response from the immigration department about the humanitarian amnesty application they filed back in June 2025 that would allow parents, undocumented immigrants, and one non-citizen child to enter and stay in the US temporarily to help an 11-year-old child receive medical treatment.

While amnesty applications are processed by US Citizenship and Immigration Services, applications submitted by previously deported persons are determined by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. USCIS and ICE did not comment on this specific case.

Attorney Danny Woodward of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a civil rights and family advocacy group, said amnesty could be granted to “anyone regardless of their immigration history.”

“It’s at the government’s discretion, and this case really deserves it,” Woodward said.

Medical records obtained by Woodward as part of the family’s efforts to obtain amnesty show the girl’s brain tumor was caused by “an unnamed ‘novel’ condition.” That’s what makes it such a rare tumor that it’s hard to treat, his mother said in Spanish.

The mother said she is still “waiting for a miracle” and hopes to be granted parole. She said the health care options available to her daughter in Mexico are very limited.

US citizens including children do not have access to care through Mexico’s public health system and are often required to pay in advance to receive emergency medical services. For the family, the only option left is to get care privately and pay out of pocket for medical expenses, which the mother says she cannot afford.

“It’s very painful,” said the mother when she remembered that first-hand experience one day when her daughter started convulsing. She called an ambulance, but the dispatchers told her they couldn’t send one because her daughter “isn’t from Mexico.” The mother ended up borrowing a car and driving 2½ hours to take her daughter to the hospital.

There, medical staff said they did not understand her daughter’s condition well enough to treat her and recommended she be sent back to the US for treatment.

“The whole time we were in the United States, we always respected the country, respected the people, maintained good behavior for everyone and helped in any way we could,” said the mother. “I can’t reach anything now, it feels like the world is falling apart.”

Driving to the hospital leads to deportation

The immigrant family’s ordeal began on February 3, 2025, after the then 10-year-old girl woke up dizzy, suffering from headaches and body aches. Her mother said the worrying symptoms came a year after surgeons removed a tumor from her daughter’s brain.

Fear of his symptoms showed a retreat in her recovery, the parents piled their children aged 17, 14, 11, 10 and 8 in the car and rushed to the Rio Grande Valley area where they live to the hospital in Houston, where specialist doctors have been treating the girl’s condition since the surgery.

But the family never made it to the Houston hospital. Border Patrol agents detained them at an immigration checkpoint in Texas.

Before President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, the family had successfully passed that checkpoint many times before, Woodward said. They were to present letters from the Houston hospital and the immigration attorney, as well as the children’s birth certificates.

“This is a family with no criminal record driving to Houston to get medical attention 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 that parents “have been given immediate removal orders,” adding that if someone “chooses to ignore them, they will face the consequences.”

The family’s move to Mexico has taken a toll on their oldest son, an 18-year-old American citizen who lives in Texas and sends his 11-year-old sister the anti-seizure medication she needs.

The Mexican brothers told NBC News they can’t wait to be reunited with him. The youngest, 8 years old, said he misses eating pizza and playing with his big brother.

The 11-year-old girl said she misses her older brother, her professional doctors and her friends at school.

The 14-year-old girl’s sister broke down as she described how distressing it has been to see her younger sister not receiving “proper treatment and medication” in Mexico. My 17-year-old brother said it was difficult to adjust to a new life in rural Mexico as he tried to finish school online.

“It was very stressful for me to be in a place I’m not used to,” he said.

The family’s case was one of the first to involve the arrest and removal of US citizen children, including children with serious medical conditions, as part of the deportation of their parents in the early days of Trump’s second term. Several other cases emerged during that time, including those of three American citizen children, ages 7, 4 and 2, who were sent to Honduras with their undocumented mothers in April. The 4-year-old had Stage 4 cancer.

DHS said it is not deporting American children. Instead, it asks deported parents whether they would prefer to be removed with their U.S. citizen children rather than separated.

Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said “it’s not just a choice — it’s all forced upon them.”

Parents facing deportation can be at risk of losing custody of their US-born children if there are no clear documents of power of attorney or guardianship that define who will care for the remaining children. Otherwise, the children enter the US foster care system, making it difficult for their parents to regain custody in the future.

The 11-year-old girl said that when she’s feeling down, one of her favorite things to do is sing karaoke to songs by her favorite artists, Carín León and K-pop Demon Hunters, especially their electronic hit song “Golden.” It reminds him of happy times, school and his friends and the life he left behind in Texas.