Kevin González, 18 years old, died on Mother’s DayMay 10, for colon cancer. Although he was born in Chicago and was there when he was diagnosed in January of this year, he died in Durango, Mexico, where he moved sick to his grandmother’s house, thinking that it was the only way to fulfill his wish to say goodbye to his undocumented parents who were detained in the United States.
He managed to say goodbye hours before he died. But his death occurred after a senseless drama because these types of cases should automatically have a humanitarian and dignified solution that did not reduce the precious time that Kevin’s parents, Isidoro and Norma Anabel, had to share with their son.
Cancer has touched me very closely and several times. I know how valuable the time you share with a loved one who has been terminally ill is. You treasure every second despite the sadness and physical and mental exhaustion from breaking nights waiting for that person to have everything they need, especially love, and not to suffer.
I can’t even imagine the pain and helplessness of being denied permission to say goodbye to your dying child. Or Kevin’s pain at not being able to be with his parents in their last days.
When Kevin was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and his parents were in Mexico.but they could not travel to the United States because the visas they requested were denied due to previous deportation. Their desperation was such that they risked crossing irregularly again and were detained in Arizona.
Kevin decides to go to Mexico to wait for them. Weeks passed and finally a judge allowed an expedited deportation and they arrived in Durango on May 9. Kevin died the next day.
“That suffering he had, he didn’t deserve it,” Kevin’s father told Telemundo.
The immigration policy of the current administration dehumanizes. It is merciless. They were not being asked to do something complicated or unprecedented. Simply permission to say goodbye to a son about to die. Even Kevin’s doctors in Chicago interceded, without success, with immigration authorities.
This government has deported American citizen children in the midst of cancer treatments, so miracles cannot be expected.
But it is outrageous that while they show no empathy in these types of cases, and continue to arrest and deport people with no criminal history, they do not press charges against real criminals because they have diverted funds and personnel from other agencies for their anti-immigrant crusade. This despite having $170 billion dollars for their mass detentions and deportations, since Congress wants to give them an additional $70 billion.
Reuters reported that from January to April of this year, federal prosecutors only brought charges in eight cases linked to drugs or weapons compared to 77 cases in the same period in 2025.
“It is a public safety problem that judicial processes are not being carried out that should be carried out,” Mary Moriarty, prosecutor of Hennepin County, in Minnesota, the epicenter of violent immigration operations focused on people without a criminal history, told the news agency.
And Trump sold the idea that he would fight crime, but his obsession with mass deportations has led him to neglect the most severe criminal cases by focusing on immigration. Government prosecutors cannot handle all the pending criminal cases, and to that they have to add all the lawsuits against the government for rights violations, even against citizens, during their immigration operations.
That is to say, The government’s immigration policy not only has an adverse impact on our economy but about our public safety.
It also affects our values. What can undocumented immigrants expect from a government capable of fabricating legal cases against prominent American citizens just to satisfy the thirst for revenge of the occupant of the White House who considers them his ‘enemies’?
A government that pardons criminals, but persecutes working families, deports children with cancer and did not have the empathy or compassion to allow parents to spend more time with their hopeless child.
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