BAKERSFIELD, CA - MAY 23: As part of her daily routine, Deysi Vargas runs a saline solution through her daughter's intravenous line before her morning shower and school. The four-year-old S.G.V. has short bowel syndrome. The IV lines are used to feed her. Her family's humanitarian parole was revoked by the Trump administration. Doctors say the child could die within days without treatment. Photographed in Bakersfield, CA on Friday, May 23, 2025. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images).
Los Angeles, California – A 4-year-old Mexican girl receiving life-saving medical care in Southern California has been granted a temporary reprieve from deportation, following weeks of uncertainty and a growing public outcry. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) approved humanitarian parole for the child and her mother, allowing them to remain in the country for one more year while she continues to receive essential treatment unavailable in Mexico.
The decision, relayed in a letter to the family’s legal team at the nonprofit Public Counsel, reverses an earlier move to revoke the family’s temporary legal status. In April and May, the U.S. government notified the family that they were ending their parole was, raising the possibility that the child could be deported despite her reliance on advanced medical care.
The girl, referred to as “Sofia” by attorneys to protect her identity, suffers from short bowel syndrome, a rare and serious condition that prevents her body from absorbing nutrients. She relies on 14 hours a day of intravenous nutrition, administered through a portable medical backpack. When she first arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2023 with her mother, she was rushed to a hospital. After stabilizing, she was enrolled in a medical program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and now receives care from her home in Bakersfield, California.
“Sofia’s parole was terminated without warning,” said Rebecca Brown, one of the family’s attorneys. “It took an international outcry and pressure from elected officials to get a response—something that used to take a single phone call.”
The case sheds light on the broader tension surrounding humanitarian parole, a policy tool that expanded under the Biden administration to manage migration at the U.S.-Mexico border. Initially reserved for emergencies or specific humanitarian crises—such as the resettlement of refugees from Southeast Asia in the 1970s—it became a more flexible instrument to allow temporary legal presence for vulnerable migrants. Now, under the Trump administration’s efforts to scale back such programs, that discretion is shrinking.
In Mexico, Sofia spent much of her life confined to a hospital. Her mother, Deysi Vargas, says that access to care in the U.S. has transformed her daughter’s life—allowing her to go to the park, the grocery store, and live with a sense of normalcy. Still, doctors say she is not yet well enough to live without daily treatment.
While the family’s lawyers welcomed the reprieve, they warn that the case is emblematic of deeper systemic failures in the immigration system—failures that, without public pressure, might have led to a devastating outcome.
