IMMIGRATION/LEGAL/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Trump administration on Tuesday [10-31-17] over its detention of a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who was stopped by Border Patrol agents in Texas last week on her way to surgery.
The girl, Rosa Maria Hernandez, had been living in Laredo, Tex., with her parents, where she was brought illegally from Mexico when she was 3 months old.
Her case became a new flash point in a national debate over the administration’s hard-line immigration policies, eliciting outcries from members of Congress as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics, an advocacy group.
The A.C.L.U. argues in its suit that Border Patrol agents illegally and erroneously detained Rosa Maria, who was traveling to a hospital in Corpus Christi to have gallbladder surgery, under the pretext that she is an ‘unaccompanied minor.’ The lawsuit, filed in a United States District Court in San Antonio, further argues that the government violated Rosa Maria’s constitutional rights by separating her from her parents without due process. The A.C.L.U. asked the court for a temporary restraining order against the government to allow her immediate release…
A spokesman for Customs and Border Protection said on Tuesday night that the agency would not comment on pending litigation, and a representative for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is holding Rosa Maria, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Both agencies are listed as defendants in the lawsuit, among several others.”
-Reggie Ugwu, “A.C.L.U. Sues Trump Administration Over Detention of 10-Year-Old Immigrant,” The New York Times online, Nov. 1, 2017