A 6-year-old Honduran boy with leukemia and his family were released from ICE detention on Wednesday after a lawsuit was filed on their behalf.
The boy, his mother and 9-year-old sister entered the U.S. legally last fall while seeking asylum from violence in Central America, USA Today reported. They applied with the now-defunct CBP One app in October and were given parole status. The app had allowed migrants to apply for asylum screening interviews at the border.
They were arrested by ICE in Los Angeles on May 29 after their asylum case was abruptly dismissed and held at a privately run family detention center in San Antonio.
The family’s lawyers argued the boy’s treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia would be disrupted if he remained in custody or was deported. He was undergoing chemotherapy for two-and-a-half years and has roughly six months of treatment remaining. He missed at least one medical appointment while in custody.
The Texas Civil Rights Project and Columbia University Immigrant Rights Clinic filed a lawsuit on the family’s behalf after the missed appointment.
Their names have not been released because of threats they faced in Honduras.
They were released near the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas and are currently staying in a shelter in South Texas while awaiting transportation back to Los Angeles, where they had been staying with a relative.
“This family’s release shows that ICE responds to public pressure,” Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic, told Texas Public Radio. “When people across the nation expressed concern about this family being snatched out of their community, subject to arrest at a courthouse and detention for weeks, ICE released them.”
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