'Monster behavior': ICE ambushes family at hospital as 7-year-old denied emergency care

Advocates sounded the alarm Friday over federal agents’ arrest last week of a family of legal asylum-seekers apprehended just outside a Portland, Oregon, hospital where they had rushed their 7-year-old daughter for emergency medical treatment.

Yohendry De Jesus Crespo and his wife Darianny Liseth González de Crespo—Venezuelans with pending asylum claims living in Gresham, Oregon—were rushing their daughter Diana to Adventist Hospital in Portland on Jan. 16 as the child suffered an unstoppable nosebleed.

According to the Oregonian, Diana never got to see a doctor, as three unmarked vehicles and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surrounded their family car in the emergency room parking lot.

“The parents pleaded to let their 7-year-old daughter... be released so she could receive urgently needed medical care, but that request was denied,” Oregon state Rep. Ricki Ruiz (D-50) said on Facebook.

Friend Ana Linares said the family was arrested, driven to a facility in Tacoma, Washington, and then sent to Texas, where they are being held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center near San Antonio.

The facility, which is run by ICE and private prison profiteer CoreCivic, is accused of providing inadequate medical care for children, as well as poor sanitary and health conditions. Detainees also report being served moldy or worm-infested food.

Ruiz said the child “remains ill, reportedly suffering from a fever, and has not received basic medical care.”

The family’s arrest—which took place less than 1,000 feet from where a US Border Patrol agent shot a Venezuelan couple earlier this month—appears to be the first time in Oregon that immigration enforcers have detained an entire family unit.

Heather Pease, a spokesperson for Adventist Hospital, told the Oregonian that “no law enforcement agency contacted us” about arresting the family, “and we did not coordinate with any agency.”

“Adventist Health Portland is here for our community, open, available, and ready to provide care when it’s needed most,” Pease added. “Patient care remains our priority, regardless of circumstances.”

It is unclear why the family was arrested. Neither parent has any known criminal record. Linares said the couple—who met in the Panamanian jungle while making their way to the United States—waited to enter the US legally and applied for an appointment. They were assigned a 2028 immigration court date to plead their asylum cases.

“They are good people, not criminals,” Linares told the Oregonian. “They were looking for stability. They wanted to help their families in Venezuela.”

The Trump administration’s deadly mass deportation blitz has targeted children—among them US citizens, including a 3-year-old cancer patient—for detention and deportation.

As Common Dreams reported Thursday, federal agents seized at least four children from Minnesota public schools over the past two weeks, including a 5-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl, who were sent to the Dilley lockup.

According to the US Department of Homeland Security, a record 73,000 people facing deportation are currently being jailed by ICE, including 6,000 family units.

Some of the nearly 5,000 children who were separated from their parents or other relatives during Trump’s first term have also yet to be reunited with their families.

Child welfare advocates worry that Trump administration pressure to increase arrests and the commodification of migrants by for-profit prisons and other private profiteers is incentivizing the arrest and detention of immigrants, including children.

Asserting that “the immediate health and well-being” of Diana Crespo “must be the top priority,” Ruiz said on Facebook, “We urgently call for the child to receive appropriate medical care without delay and for the family to be afforded due process and access to legal counsel.”

“Situations involving children require heightened care, compassion, and coordination,” he added, “and we expect all responsible agencies to act swiftly and humanely to ensure this child’s health and safety are protected.”