Oscar and Irma Sanchez, both of whom are undocumented immigrants living in Texas, were arrested while awaiting a serious surgery for their two-month-old son, highlighting the excruciating human cost of President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade.

A heart-wrenching story published by NPR on Wednesday evening detailed how the couple came into contact with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials back in May while seeking treatment for their son Isaac’s pyloric stenosis, a condition that causes vomiting and weight loss in infants. There was no hospital that could perform the surgery in the Rio Grande Valley area where the couple lives, so they would have to drive to a children’s hospital in Corpus Christi, TX—and past a Border Patrol checkpoint.

But as they were sitting in another hospital trying to figure out how to proceed, the choice was made for them, as a Border Patrol agent turned up in the waiting room. (Oscar Sanchez told NPR he suspects a nurse called the authorities on them.) The agent said they officers could escort the couple to the Corpus Christi hospital for their son to get his surgery, but that they would be arrested the moment they arrived and face deportation proceedings. As any parent would, the couple agreed.

What followed were two straight days of constant surveillance by Border Patrol agents, who Sanchez said never left their sides, asking Irma to keep the door open while she breast-fed and following him to the hospital cafeteria. They were arrested and separately taken to the local Border Patrol station to be booked before being allowed to return to their baby’s side. Sanchez asked the doctor to delay the operation until both he and his wife could be at the hospital.

“We didn’t know if they were going to let us stay with our son or not,” Sanchez told NPR in Spanish. “You feel vulnerable.”

Advocacy groups said the treatment the Sanchez family was subjected to is usually reserved for high-value targets like violent gang members or drug traffickers. Neither Oscar nor Irma have a criminal record.

It’s the latest terrifying incident in a series of arrests where immigration authorities are encroaching on spaces once thought safe for undocumented people. Immigration police have turned up to arrest people at hospitals, homeless shelters, and courthouses since the Trump administration rolled back Obama era protections to avoid making arrests in sensitive locations.

ICE has also dramatically escalated the number of immigrants it has arrested even though they have no criminal record, and Thomas Homan, the acting head of ICE, has warned all undocumented people that they are targets for potential deportation.

6124706
They're trying to twist this crap as some sort of sob story when they never should have been in the USA in the first place.

And of course they're arresting illegal immigrants that have no criminal records, criminal or not, they should not be here!

6124799

 they should not be here!

Why?

6124809
They should at least try to become citizens if they're going to stay or something. They're here illegally, taking up our space and air and food. They shouldn't be here.

6124837

They're here illegally, taking up our space and air and food. 

You make the United States sound like a tinpot less developed country. We can spend billions and billions of dollars on military hardware and fund dozens of foreign wars. We are more than capable of providing space, air, and food to these people. We are not weak and there is no shortage of money and resources to be allocated to these people.

You really think that these large, empty flyover states like Montana or South Dakota don't have room for these people? You think that we can't feed and clothe them when we can approve $700 Billion Dollars for defense packages that we don't really need?

6124849
Probably not.

But welcome to the real world where things don't work that way. It's not like they're refuges or anything.

6124912

But welcome to the real world where things don't work that way. 

"better things aren't possible," Raichu said, while stabbing themselves in the feet with rusty pebbles, because shoes are too radical an idea.

You ever stop to think that maybe, just maybe, we could improve the world around us instead of throwing our hands in the air and saying "well, that's the real world" and leaving shit to fester?

I'm still trying to get over the utter nonsense you just said in which the most powerful military empire known to mankind, one that put men on the moon, is befuddled by something as minor and irrelevant as immigration.

6124706
I hate to say this but NPR news is notorious for up scaling things like this, but at the same time I don't know much about what's going on and do feel for the family regardless. Do you have any other source links to share on this matter, such as CNN, MSNBC, or a local news outlite from that area? Just don't use fox news, I say that because the onion news is more creditable than fox.