(The Center Square) – Attorneys told reporters Wednesday morning they’re working to keep a 4-year-old Mexican girl in lifesaving hospital care in the U.S. despite an unexpected self-deportation order.
But after the lawyers’ news conference in Los Angeles, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told The Center Square Wednesday afternoon that any reports of the family being actively deported are false.
“This family applied with USCIS for humanitarian parole on May 14, 2025, and the application is still being considered,” a senior Department of Homeland Security official told The Center Square in an email. The official’s name was not included in the email from the department’s media relations office.
The lawyers Wednesday said they wrote the Trump administration in May and filed new documents to apply for a new humanitarian parole, which would allow the Mexican child and her family to stay in the U.S. Attorneys said the previous parole, which allowed the family to stay until July, was revoked in a letter that the family received April 11 from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The lawyers said the parents’ work permits were also suddenly revoked by federal officials.
The family received an emergency visa in 2023 through humanitarian parole, which allowed them to travel to Los Angeles, according to CBS Los Angeles.
Sofia Vargas, the child who came with her family on the visa in 2023 from their home country of Mexico, is receiving 14 hours of intravenous nutrition every six weeks at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles during her treatment for short bowel syndrome. (Sofia is not the girl’s real name. She is being publicly called “Sofia” to protect her privacy.) Her parents live with their daughter in Bakersfield in California’s Kern County and bring her to Los Angeles for the treatments, which her mother Deysi Vargas said aren’t available in Mexico.
Sofia was born premature with short bowel syndrome, which prevents her from getting nutrition on her own, Vargas said in a statement posted at GoFundMe.com.
“Without the treatment provided by Children’s Hospital, Sofia will die,” Vargas said. She noted the equipment for the treatment doesn’t exist outside the U.S.
Attorney Gina Amato Lough said the family wasn’t told why the humanitarian parole was revoked and hasn’t been accused of violating rules. The family received the letter calling for self-deportation on April 11, Amato Lough, directing attorney of Public Counsel, the nonprofit law firm representing the family, told reporters.
“Deporting this family under these conditions is not only unlawful, it constitutes a moral failure that violates the basic tenets of humanity and decency,” Amato Lough said at a televised news conference Wednesday morning at her law firm’s Los Angeles offices.
Vargas brought her child to the news conference and addressed reporters in Spanish. Attorney Rebecca Brown went to the podium and translated Vargas’ statement, which said Sofia wasn’t getting better in Mexico but saw improvement in Los Angeles.
“Now with the help she received in the United States, my daughter has an opportunity to get out of the hospital, know the world and live like a normal girl of 4 years,” Vargas said in the English translation read by Brown.
Without the treatment, Sofia could die within days, Vargas said, referring to what Sofia’s medical team told her.
