KISSIMMEE, Fla. — A mother and her adult daughter, both from Ecuador, were led out of a Central Florida hospital in handcuffs this week, only days after a highway wreck nearly killed them — a case that has reignited a running argument over how far federal immigration agents can go once someone is already in a hospital bed.
Grace Calero, who is 39, and her daughter Giulianna Carriel, 19, were traveling a Florida highway on Thursday, August 20, when an oncoming car veered across the center line into their path, sending their vehicle into a rollover. Paramedics freed both women from the wreck and brought them to HCA Florida Poinciana Hospital in nearby Kissimmee, where doctors placed a neck brace on Calero for her injuries while Carriel was evaluated for the shock of the collision. Neither woman had been discharged when a second ordeal began.
Agents Arrive at a Sedated Patient's Bedside
According to family members who spoke with Univision, Calero was still under sedation for pain when agents came to her bedside, asked about her immigration status, and then handcuffed her and walked her out of the building in her hospital gown. Relatives say they asked to see a warrant or asked the agents to identify themselves and got no response. Carriel was taken into custody a short time later. A relative who filmed the encounter can be heard begging the officers in Spanish to stop, while other patients in the room reacted with visible alarm. The video spread quickly online and drew sharp criticism from immigrant-advocacy groups.
Family members have also said Carriel had a seizure as she watched her mother being handcuffed though it has not been confirmed by hospital records and is distinct from the shock-related treatment she had received earlier that day.
What the Family Says They Had
Grace's sister, Gia Calero, has told multiple outlets that Grace had an asylum case still pending along with a current work permit, and that Giulianna held a visa that was not due to expire until 2030. None of that has been independently verified through a court record or immigration filing. Recalling the moment a hospital worker first mentioned ICE, Gia told Telemundo she could not make sense of it: "She came in for a car accident, not an interview with ICE."
What the Sheriff's Office Says It Found
The family's version conflicts with the account attributed to the Polk County Sheriff's Office, which responded to the original crash and first raised questions about the women's immigration paperwork. The office operates under a signed 287(g) agreement with ICE that trains designated deputies to question people about immigration status and flag them for federal pickup — one of the task-force-style deals that, by February 2025, had been signed by every sheriff's office in Florida's 67 counties. Deputies are reported to have concluded that both women's visas had lapsed years earlier, which is what led to the call to federal agents. Neither Calero nor Carriel faced a state or local charge before being handed to immigration custody, and as of this writing, neither the sheriff's office nor ICE has issued a public statement reconciling that account with the family's.
A Policy Reversal That Reached Into Hospitals
None of this would have been possible at a hospital a few years ago. Within a day of returning to office in January 2025, President Trump had the Department of Homeland Security scrap the guidance that had, across more than ten years of federal practice, discouraged immigration arrests at hospitals, schools and churches, telling agents instead to use their own judgment, according to a DHS statement issued at the time. Advocacy organizations warned then that the change would frighten sick and injured immigrants away from emergency care; this case is one of a growing number in which agents have instead followed patients directly into treatment.
Congress has not undone that shift. Lawmakers reintroduced the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act in 2025 to restore hospital-specific protections, but the bill has not passed, and hospitals generally have no legal authority to keep federal agents out of public treatment areas.
A Community Already on Edge
Kissimmee and the surrounding Poinciana area, along the Interstate 4 corridor, sit inside one of Florida's fastest-growing Latino regions. The Poinciana census-designated place alone counted 69,309 residents as of the 2020 count, with more than half identifying as Hispanic or Latino, in a community with a substantial Ecuadorian and broader South American presence. Video of Calero and Carriel in restraints has traveled well beyond Central Florida, unsettling relatives in South Florida's much larger Ecuadorian diaspora and in the New York and New Jersey area, home to one of the country's largest Ecuadorian communities. For many families, the arrest confirms a fear that has spread since hospitals lost their special protection: that a 911 call after a crash, or a routine trip to the ER, can now end in a detention cell rather than a discharge form.
What Comes Next
As of this writing, relatives say they have not been told where either woman is being held, and no attorney has publicly confirmed whether removal proceedings have begun.
