With USCIS unable to grant parole, Ángel Martínez must choose between receiving medical care – or going to Mexico to say goodbye

Ángel Martínez did not choose to leave his native Mexico at the age of seven for a life in the United States. But now, nearly 20 years later, he faces a wrenching choice: where to die?

Does he stay in the country that is his home, and receive palliative care to relieve the pain of his terminal medical condition?

Or does he travel to Mexico to say goodbye to his parents – and probably forfeit the chance to return?

Martínez’s fate has become entangled in the national debate over immigration reform that was fueled by Donald Trump’s decision to cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), an executive program that shielded nearly 700,000 young undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers” from deportation.

“I don’t think the Trump administration understands how this affects families and people like me who need to cross a border to be together,” said Martínez. “I belong with my mom – but I have to come back.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ángel Martínez and Gregory Yanik, director for the pediatric blood and marrow transplant program at Mott’s Children’s hospital at the University of Michigan Medical Center, where Martínez is a patient. Photograph: Angel Martinez

Martínez grew up in eastern Michigan and lives in the town of Mount Clemens, less than an hour’s drive from the US border with Canada.

He was in middle school when he learned what it meant to be “undocumented”. One morning he woke up to learn that his mother had been apprehended by immigration officers during her night shift at a plastic manufacturing plant. She was deported to Mexico, but returned to the US about a year later to be with her family, he said.

In 2007, Martínez was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and ultimately required a bone marrow transplant. His recovery was complicated by the development of graft v host disease, a rare condition that occurs when donor cells attack the host’s organs and can cause severe damage to the skin, liver and lungs.

After 10 years and 21 hospital admissions to manage the disease, Martínez has “no chance of recovery” and is unlikely to live through the year, according to a medical note written by his doctor.

But hopes for Martínez to be reunited with his parents are dim.

His mother and father are not allowed to enter the US because of past immigration violations. If Martínez were to leave the country without permission, it is unlikely he will ever set foot in the US again because he had lived in the country unlawfully before receiving Daca protections. He could try to beg for mercy at the border, but there is no guarantee he would be granted entry.

Quick guide What is Daca and who are the Dreamers? Show Hide Who are the Dreamers? Dreamers are young immigrants who would qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (Daca) program, enacted under Barack Obama in 2012. Most people in the program entered the US as children and have lived in the US for years “undocumented”. Daca gave them temporary protection from deportation and work permits. Daca was only available to people younger than 31 on 15 June 2012, who arrived in the US before turning 16 and lived there continuously since June 2007. Most Dreamers are from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and the largest numbers live in California, Texas, Florida and New York. Donald Trump cancelled the program in September but has also said he wants Congress to develop a program to “help” the population. What will happen to the Dreamers? Under the Trump administration, new applications under Daca will no longer be accepted. For those currently in the program, their legal status and other Daca-related permits (such as to work and attend college) will begin expiring in March 2018 – unless Congress passes legislation allowing a new channel for temporary or permanent legal immigration status – and Dreamers will all lose their status by March 2020.

Technically, as their statuses lapse they could be deported and sent back to countries many have no familiarity with. It is still unclear whether this would happen. Fear had been rising in the run-up to last week’s announcement. Those with work permits expiring between 5 September 2017 and 5 March 2018 will be allowed to apply for renewal by 5 October. What does the recent ruling by Judge William Alsup mean? In his ruling, Alsup ordered the Trump administration to restart the program, allowing Daca recipients who already qualify for the program to submit applications for renewal. However, he said the federal government did not have to process new applications from people who had not previously received protection under the program. When the Trump administration ended the Daca program, it allowed Daca recipients whose legal status expired on or before 5 March to renew their legal status. Roughly 22,000 recipients failed to successfully renew their legal status for various reasons. Legal experts and immigration advocates are advising Daca recipients not to file for renewal until the administration provides more information about how it intends to comply with the ruling. “These next days and weeks are going to create a lot of confusion on the legal front,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, which has filed a separate lawsuit against the Trump administration’s termination of Daca. Joanna Walters

Before Trump ended Daca, Dreamers like Martínez could apply for advance parole, a permission to temporarily travel abroad for educational, professional and humanitarian purposes, and then re-enter the US. But the benefit was stripped and never restored.

With few options available, Martínez’s lawyer, Eleanor Sintjago, tried another route. She helped him submit an application for humanitarian parole-in-place, which is commonly used to reunite undocumented members of the US military and their families but can be granted to other applicants for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or significant public benefit.

In the application, Sintjago argued that US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has the “discretionary authority” to grant parole to Daca beneficiaries “in especially deserving cases”.

“Ángel is not asking for much,” said Sintjago. “He is not asking for permanent legal status or for any more rights or privileges than he currently has once he returns.”

On 8 March, Martínez received a terse reply: “USCIS is unable to grant the request for parole at this time.”

His mother cried as he read the letter to her in Spanish, unable to explain to her why it had been denied.

A spokesman for USCIS said the agency does not comment on specific cases but confirmed that it stopped accepting advance parole applications from Daca recipients on 5 September, when the program was ended.

When Martínez was first diagnosed with leukemia in 2007, his mother quit her job to stay by his side in the hospital. But by the time he entered hospice care last summer, she was thousands of miles away, reachable only by phone.

In 2015, she was stopped by police after making an illegal turn, turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and deported again to Mexico, where she now lives in the central state of Guanajuato, Martínez said.

She calls her son at least every other day. But after each conversation, the same question lingers in the 2,000-mile distance between mother and son: will they ever see each other again?



“This is very hard for her,” Martínez said. “She is sad and she gets depressed.”

The Obama administration created Daca through executive action in 2012 after years of congressional inaction over the protection of Dreamers. The program allowed undocumented immigrants to apply for renewable two-year visas to live, work and study in the US without the threat of deportation.



Martínez qualified for protections and found work, first at the fast-food chain Del Taco and then in customer service. He met his future wife, and in 2014, they married in a small courthouse ceremony in Mount Clemens.

Since then, however, his health has continued to decline. He uses a walker to move around the house and wheelchair when his cousins take him to the movies or dinner. He struggles to raise his left arm.

In September, his hopes soared when he received a letter from USCIS informing him that his Daca protections had been renewed for another two years. But four days later – as his lawyer worked to compile his application for “advance parole” to travel to Mexico to see his mother – the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, announced that the administration was ending Daca.

Courts have since ordered the administration to restart the program while legal challenges to Trump’s decision proceed, but the benefit allowing Dreamers to travel was not included.

Sheridan Aguirre, a spokesman for United We Dream, a national organization representing Dreamers and undocumented youth, said the little-known benefit was a “crucial” part of Daca that allowed them to reunite with their families, visit ailing relatives and attend funerals.

Every person should have the ability to be with their loved ones in those final moments of life Sheridan Aguirre

“Every person should have the ability to be with their loved ones in those final moments of life,” he said. “Taking that away from folks is denying them that basic human experience.”



According to USCIS, the agency approved approximately 42,600 travel permissions since 2012, when Daca began, through 30 August 2017.

While Congress and the White House wrestle over the program’s future, the fates of hundreds of thousands of Daca recipients hang in the balance.

“I hope that by telling my story I do get a chance to go see my mom,” Martínez said. “I also hope that I can change things for other people in the same situation as me.”

Last week, lawmakers bypassed another opportunity to enact protections for Dreamers despite a last-minute threat by Trump to veto a budget measure because it “totally abandoned” the young immigrants. Meanwhile, the legal challenges could linger in the courts for months – even years.

And for Martínez, that could be too late.

“The doctor tells me that if I get an infection that is bad enough it could kill me,” he said. “I just want to see my mom before that happens.”