To: Border Patrol and Department of Homeland Security
Border Patrol: End Ambulance Checkpoints That Target Sick Kids
Stop making immigration arrests at sensitive locations, including ambulances and emergency vehicles going through Border Patrol checkpoints, hospitals, schools, churches, public demonstrations, and more.
Why is this important?
Recently, Rosa Maria Hernandez was freed, after our national outrage and the #FreeRosa campaign forced Border Patrol to allow her to return to her parents.
But the truth is, every day families in places like Corpus Christi, Texas, are either avoiding taking their sick kids to the hospital or dealing with inhumane separation as a result of an out-of-control enforcement system that forces ambulances to stop at immigration checkpoints and arrests sick family members.
At Driscoll Children's Hospital, in Corpus Christi, Texas, two parents were arrested by Customs and Border Patrol while waiting for a critical operation on their two-month old son.
Irma and Oscar Sanchez, were told that they would travel outside their residential area to the children's hospital two hours away to have the operation performed on their son, Isaac. But, it meant they would need to travel through a border patrol checkpoint.
And after crossing through the checkpoint in an ambulance with their son who was getting intravenous fluids and had a tube in his stomach, they were "escorted" to hospital only to be arrested one-by-one and placed in deportation proceedings.
Months later, ten-year-old Rosa Maria Hernandez was detained, 150 miles away from her parents, after Border Patrol was alerted while she was on her way to a life-saving gallbladder surgery. Border Patrol agents allowed Rosa Maria to continue to Driscoll Children's Hospital but followed the ambulance the rest of the way there, then waited outside her room until she was released from the hospital.
This is horrific and inhumane. The Border Patrol has been violating many of its own guidelines around avoiding sensitive places like hospitals and keeping children and families together whenever possible, and the public deserves assurance that they will stop.
Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security must stop making immigration arrests at sensitive locations, including ambulances and emergency vehicles going through Border Patrol checkpoints, hospitals, schools, churches, public demonstrations, and more.