On MSNBC Tuesday, Rachel Maddow reported on the Trump administration's abrupt ending of the "medical deferred action" program that allows non-citizens to remain in the U.S. to continue receiving life-saving treatment. Families in this program are now being given 33 days to leave the country.
A growing number of families with sick children are receiving notices from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services as part of a recent policy change, attorneys said Monday. They are being told that the agency will no longer renew any applications to stay in the U.S. under the program.
Maddow profiled at least four children who are relying on U.S. medical care to stay alive, and who now have received letters stating they must voluntarily leave the country within 33 days.
“This is not something the Trump administration announced with great fanfare… they didn't make any public pronouncements about getting rid of this program... [But] they’re singling out the families of sick children to facilitate their deaths by sending them to places they can no longer get treatment," said Maddow.
Jonathan Sanchez, who has been getting treatment for cystic fibrosis in Boston over the past three years, is not sure what he will do if he is forced to return to Honduras. The 16-year-old spoke to radio station WBUR in tears, saying, “If they deny the program, then I’ll need to go back to my country. I will probably die, because in my country there is no treatment for CF (cystic fibrosis)."
“We’ve reached the most inhumane of all of Donald Trump’s policies,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) at a briefing about the subject at an immigrant center.
"This was a program that existed on the assumption there was some humanity left in the U.S. government," said Anthony Marino, immigration legal services director of the Irish International Immigrant Center, on MSNBC.
"I don't know how they expect people to pull children from their hospital beds, pull them from life-saving treatment, and go somewhere where they know the child is going to die… and if they don't, they’ll drag them through deportation proceedings."
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