LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — A Central Florida doctor is pleading to keep an 11-year-old girl with a rare genetic disorder and the girl’s mother in the United States. This is as ICE ordered the mother to deport in the next two weeks.
Only Channel 9’s Ashlyn Webb spoke to the mother and child along with their legal team in Groveland.
Now-retired doctor and University of Florida professor Cheryl Garganta wrote that deporting America Perez-Ramirez would be a “death sentence” for her daughter, Yoselin. Eyewitness News spoke by phone with Dr. Garganta Thursday night. The family’s attorneys say they presented this letter to authorities.
Yoselin was diagnosed with MSUD when she was just five days old. Perez-Ramirez says she’s a miracle, surviving after being in a coma for nearly six months. The disorder doesn’t allow her body to process amino acids. She’s now dependent on a special diet made up of a formula and foods created for special medical purposes. She has to have her blood tested every week or two and monitored by her metabolic healthcare team.
Yoselin cried as her mother’s lawyers spoke to us about ICE ordering her only caretaker, her mother, to deport to Mexico.
“I want my mom to stay here so she can take care of me,” Yoselin said.
“I’ve spent the last few days very sad when I found out about this. They want to send me to Mexico. And I have a daughter with special needs. They told me to buy a ticket for her and bring her with me,” America Perez-Ramirez said in Spanish.
In this letter, the now retired UF doctor writes “this level of care will not be provided in Mexico and there is a high likelihood that she will die if she is forced to move.”
Perez-Ramirez already lost her other two children from the same disorder while in Mexico before Yoselin was born.
“I need them to help me,” Perez-Ramirez said in Spanish.
Perez-Ramirez now is forced to wear a monitor around her ankle. She’s ordered to wear it until she arrives back in Mexico.
Attorney Bridgette M. Bennett says Perez- Ramirez was originally given stays of removal, halting the deportation. However, she says under the Trump administration, Perez- Ramirez’s stay wasn’t granted. She was ordered to deport.
Bennett says authorities sometimes give leniency with medical conditions; however, she says there’s been no mercy in Perez-Ramirez’s case.
“It’s very, very harsh,” Bennett said. “This is our last hope, bringing it to the media attention, asking for good American citizens to be outraged at what is going on and talk to their congresspeople, to talk each other, to show compassion. This is not who we are as Americans. This is not who we are. This is actually cruelty dressed in paperwork.”
This deportation order is as Perez-Ramirez still hasn’t received a decision in her active immigration case, claiming she was human trafficked to work on farms in the United States. Her lawyers say her employer didn’t apply to renew her visa. They allege there was labor exploitation and sexual harassment. She says her employer also took away her passport.
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