Toddler hospitalized with respiratory failure was returned to ICE detention without prescribed medication, lawsuit says
An 18-month-old baby held with her parents at a South Texas immigration detention center became so ill last month that she was rushed to the hospital with life-threatening respiratory failure — then returned to custody days later, where she was denied the medication she needed to survive, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday.
Little Amalia remained in custody for nine more days and was released only after her lawyers filed an emergency habeas corpus petition in federal court challenging her continued detention. She was released Friday after the case was filed.
Amalia was in good health before immigration officials arrested her family in El Paso in December and transferred them to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, an isolated prison-like facility where hundreds of immigrant children are held with their parents. Advocates and pediatric experts have warned that conditions at the center are dangerous for young children.
Amalia’s health deteriorated rapidly, the lawsuit says. On Jan. 18, she was rushed to a children’s hospital in San Antonio, where doctors treated her for pneumonia, Covid-19, RSV and severe respiratory distress.
“She was on the verge of death,” said Elora Mukherjee, a professor at Columbia Law School and director of the school’s immigrant rights clinic, who filed the petition seeking the family’s release.
After days of intensive oxygen treatment, Amalia began to recover. But his release from the hospital does not mark the end of his ordeal.
Despite warnings from medical experts that the child remained medically vulnerable and at high risk of reinfection, immigration officials returned Amalia and her mother to the detention center, the lawsuit says.
“After baby Amalia was hospitalized for 10 days, ICE thought this baby should be taken back to Dilley, where she was denied access to the medications that hospital doctors told her she needed,” Mukherjee said. “It’s so outrageous.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He has defended his use of family detention, saying in statements and legal filings that detainees are provided with basic necessities and that authorities are working to ensure the safety of children and adults.
CoreCivic, the company that manages Dilley under a federal contract, referred questions about the facility to DHS and said in a statement that “the health and safety of those in our care” is the company’s top priority.
Amalia’s case comes amid renewed scrutiny of living conditions at Dilley, which was thrust into the national spotlight last month after immigration authorities arrested Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old boy taken into custody with his father – an episode that sparked widespread outrage after a photograph showed the child wearing a blue bunny hat as he was taken away by police.
Accounts from detained families, their attorneys and court records describe Dilley as a place where hundreds of children languish while being served contaminated food, receiving little education and struggling to get basic medical care. Affidavits from dozens of parents say prolonged confinement is taking serious physical and psychological toll on children — including regression, weight loss, recurring illnesses and nightmares — as the federal government expands the use of family detention.
Like many other families detained at Dilley, lawyers for Amalia’s parents say the family should never have been detained.
Kheilin Valero Marcano and Stiven Arrieta Prieto entered the United States in 2024 after fleeing Venezuela, where they claim they were persecuted because of their political opposition to President Nicolas Maduro, according to the lawsuit. They applied for asylum through the government’s CBP One appointment system, and immigration authorities allowed the family to live in El Paso while their case moved forward. According to the lawsuit, they regularly reported to immigration officials and complied with all requirements, including participation in an alternative-to-detention supervision program.
That changed on Dec. 11, when the family showed up together for a check-in and were taken into custody, according to the lawsuit. Two days later, they were transferred to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, a sprawling complex an hour south of San Antonio, more than 500 miles from the community where they lived.
Once in Dilley, the parents say their daughter’s health rapidly deteriorated. In early January, Amalia developed a high fever that did not subside. She started vomiting, had diarrhea and had difficulty breathing.
As she grew weaker, her parents said they repeatedly took her to the facility’s medical clinic — eight or nine times, according to the lawsuit — to seek help. Each visit ended the same way, according to the lawsuit: basic fever medication.
By mid-January, Amalia was barely getting enough oxygen. On Jan. 18, according to the lawsuit, her blood oxygen level plunged into the 50s — a life-threatening emergency — and she was taken out of the facility with her mother to a hospital. Her father remained in Dilley, unable to communicate with his wife or see his daughter as doctors worked to save her.
She spent 10 days at Methodist Children’s Hospital in San Antonio, most of that time on oxygen as her lungs struggled to recover. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents maintained constant surveillance on Amalia and her mother throughout the hospitalization, according to the lawsuit.
Mukherjee said the girl’s mother spent her days praying at her daughter’s bedside, terrified that she would die – and was later devastated to learn that once released, they would be returned to detention.
When Amalia was released from the hospital on Jan. 28, doctors gave clear instructions, medical records cited in the lawsuit show: She needed breathing treatments delivered by nebulizer and nutritional supplements to help her regain strength and weight.
Instead of allowing them to return to El Paso, immigration officials drove Amalia and her mother back to Dilley, according to the lawsuit.
Once there, detention medical staff confiscated Amalia’s nebulizer, albuterol, and nutritional supplements. Parents had to wait for hours in what inmates described in interviews and affidavits as the “pill line” — a line outside that families must stand in to get medicine and other necessities.
Amalia shivered in her mother’s arms as they waited in the cold, Mukherjee said, only to be given PediaSure and denied breathing medications prescribed by doctors.
As Amalia remained in custody, Mukherjee and other immigration lawyers repeatedly urged federal authorities to release the family, warning that the child’s condition could quickly worsen.
Medical experts who reviewed Amalia’s case submitted affidavits warning that returning a medically fragile child to custody — especially without reliable access to prescribed medications — put her in extreme danger. A doctor warned the child was at “high risk of medical decompensation and death.”
Mukherjee’s efforts intensified after health authorities confirmed two cases of measles among those detained at Dilley.
After those appeals failed, Mukherjee filed an emergency appeal in federal court seeking the family’s release.
A few hours later, Friday evening, the family was released. They were not immediately available for an interview.
The reprieve has brought them relief, Mukherjee said, but she expects the experience to have lasting consequences.
“I imagine they will carry the trauma of this experience for the rest of their lives,” she said.
