18-month-old girl hospitalized with respiratory failure and denied meds in ICE detention, lawyers say

Amalia and her parents, Kheilin Valero Marcano and Stiven Arrieta Prieto, were released from ICE custody hours after a lawsuit seeking their release was filed last week, but her case has amplified concerns about conditions inside the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, a remote facility holding a growing number of immigrant families and the site of a recent measles outbreak.

The Venezuelan family arrived in the United States with legal permission in 2024 after fleeing Nicolas Maduro’s regime. They were due to appear in immigration court in 2027 before they were abruptly arrested during a routine ICE check-in appointment December 11.

Then Amalia’s health quickly deteriorated, according to the family’s attorneys.

She experienced persistent high fevers, vomiting, diarrhea and infections while her parents begged detention center staff for help, according to the lawsuit.

On January 1, she developed a fever that spiked as high as 104 degrees. In the days that followed, she struggled to breathe. She lost 10 percent of her body weight.

She was only hospitalized after her parents repeatedly requested urgent medical care while their child’s blood oxygen saturation plummeted to dangerously low levels, attorneys wrote.

Amalia was transferred to two hospitals in Texas, where doctors diagnosed her with pneumonia, COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and viral bronchitis. She was hooked up to a machine to receive supplemental oxygen.

She was hospitalized from January 18 to 28, after which doctors provided her parents with medication and Pediasure to support her recovery, along with detailed instructions for her care, according to medical records cited in the complaint.

But ICE denied the family access to her prescriptions, including Albuterol and a nebulizer, and confiscated her Pediasure, according to the lawsuit. Her parents were forced to wait in long lines for hours in an outdoor queue each day to request their daughter’s medicine — only to be turned away, lawyers wrote.

Amalia had trouble sleeping inside the facility, where lights are on 24 hours a day, in a room she and her mother shared with four other mothers and their children, according to the lawsuit.

The family struggled to eat inside; they reported bugs in the food and lack of access to clean, drinkable water.

Even after the family was granted release to leave ICE custody, officials did not return her nebulizer, medication, birth certificate or vaccination card, lawyers told The Independent. Attorneys are still fighting to get them back.

“This is outrageous,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, which filed the petition seeking the family’s release.

“ICE continued to detain Baby Amalia during a measles outbreak and in a setting where she was exposed to other infectious viruses,” she told The Independent. “Hundreds of children and families remain detained and at risk at Dilley. This is unconscionable.”

A spokesperson for Homeland Security said any claims that the toddler “did not receive her medication or proper medical treatment are FALSE.”

After she “became ill with a respiratory illness,” Amalia “immediately received proper medical care” and was hospitalized, according to Homeland Security deputy secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

“When back at the facility, she was in the medical unit and received proper treatment and prescribed medicines,” she said in a statement to The Independent.

ICE detentions have exploded since Donald Trump returned to the White House, with more than 70,000 people being held at any given point inside detention centers across the country, the most in modern American history.

While the federal government does not publicly disclose information about children in immigration custody, data from advocacy groups, attorneys and investigative news organizations suggest that a growing number of those detainees are children.

At least 3,800 people under 18 years old, including 20 infants, were in immigration enforcement custody last year, according to The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization focused on criminal justice.

The latest lawsuit comes amid heightened scrutiny at Dilley, a sprawling, fenced-in facility run by private prison firm CoreCivic roughly 70 miles south of San Antonio.

The compound first opened during Barack Obama’s administration to support the wave of families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, though Joe Biden’s administration stopped holding families at the facility in 2021.

Trump re-opened the facility after taking office as his administration began pursuing immigrants with families who have spent years living in the country’s interior.

Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father were released from Dilley February 1 after a judge’s searing order against the family’s detention, which drew renewed outrage against the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts.

A photograph of Liam in the cold wearing a blue hat and Spider-Man backpack has become emblematic of sweeping arrests in Minnesota after federal officers surged into the state last month, sparking several lawsuits and demonstrations across the country.

The administration is also stripping legal protections for millions of immigrants who were previously living and working with legal permissions in the United States, like Amalia’s parents, making them immediately vulnerable for arrest and removal.

After reaching Mexico from Venezuela in 2024, her parents made an appointment with the CBP One app and presented at the U.S.-Mexico border, where they were processed into the country under humanitarian parole and given a date to appear in immigration court December 21, 2027.

They assimilated into El Paso, Texas, with their newborn, and attended regular court-mandated ICE check-in appointments.

The Trump administration terminated temporary legal statuses for immigrants who entered the country with the app, which was used by roughly 985,000 people seeking legal entry into the country before the president abruptly ended the program.

“She and her parents did everything right — they entered the United States lawfully, they complied with all their immigration check-ins, they went to church every week and contributed to their community,” according to Mukherjee.

After terminating CBP One, Homeland Security re-tooled the app as CBP Home and encourage people to use it to “self-deport.”

“Being in detention is a choice,” McLaughlin said. “We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live the American dream. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return.”

“Detaining immigrant children in inhumane and degrading conditions is illegal, unconstitutional, and un-American,” she said. “Children and families at Dilley must be released.”