ICE detains family seeking emergency care for child at Portland hospital
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Lea esta historia en español: ICE detiene a una familia que buscaba atención médica de emergencia para su hija en un hospital de Portland
Federal immigration agents arrested and detained a Gresham family, including a 7-year-old child, outside a Portland hospital last week as the girl’s parents sought emergency medical care for her.
The arrest at Adventist Health hospital Jan. 16 took place less than 1,000 feet from the medical office parking lot where a Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a couple from Venezuela two weeks ago.
It appears to be the first time in Oregon that Trump administration immigration authorities have detained an entire family unit, and is one of a few rare cases of immigrants being detained while seeking medical care. Until last year, when President Donald Trump rescinded Obama-era protections for immigrants, hospitals, schools and churches were deemed off limits for immigration enforcement.
“No one should live in fear of being detained while getting medical care for their child,” said U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, a Democrat who represents Oregon’s 3rd District.
On Friday, the Oregon Nurses Association echoed those comments, calling the family’s arrest in front of the hospital “alarming, chilling, and deeply shameful.”
The family’s detention was first reported by Antonio Sánchez of the Spanish-language news outlet Noticias Noroeste.
It happened around dawn last Friday when 40-year-old Yohendry De Jesus Crespo and his wife, 34-year-old Darianny Liseth Gonzalez de Crespo, took their daughter to Adventist Health’s emergency department in Southeast Portland. Diana, 7, had a nosebleed that just wouldn’t stop and her parents, immigrants from Venezuela with a pending asylum petition, were increasingly worried about her health.
They never got to see a doctor.
Three unmarked cars with immigration agents surrounded their car in the ER parking lot, said Ana Linares, a close family friend whose husband talked with the parents after their arrest.
A spokesperson for Adventist Health Portland said the arrest came as a complete surprise to the hospital. “No law enforcement agency contacted us, and we did not coordinate with any agency,” Heather Pease, the spokesperson, said. “Adventist Health Portland is here for our community, open, available, and ready to provide care when it’s needed most. Patient care remains our priority, regardless of circumstances.”
Agents detained the parents and their daughter, drove them to the immigration detention center in Tacoma, then flew them to Texas, Linares said.
It’s unclear why the parents and their child, who was born in Ecuador, were detained. A review of court records by The Oregonian/OregonLive turns up no criminal history in Oregon or in Utah where they previously lived.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to requests for comment. The ICE detainee locator system shows the family is being held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center near San Antonio, Texas (also known as South Texas Family Residential Center) – the country’s largest family detention center.
Linares said the parents – known to their friends as Joey and Dari – and their daughter entered the U.S. via San Ysidro, California in November 2024, along with Linares, her husband, children and mother-in-law who also hail from Venezuela. The two families had met in the Panamanian jungle as they were both heading to the U.S. overland, she said.
Together they crossed Panama and the rest of Central America by foot and bus, eventually spending a month in Mexico while awaiting their turn to enter the U.S. legally, Linares said. Both families applied for an appointment via a U.S. Customs and Border Protection mobile app, Linares said, requesting permission to present themselves at a port of entry – a pathway for asylum seekers to enter the country before Trump took office last year.
The two families entered the U.S. on the same day, Linares said, and both received a 2028 immigration court date that would eventually allow them to plead their asylum cases.
The Crespo-Gonzalez family spent their first year in Utah while the Linares family settled in Portland. But after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed in October in Utah, triggering a large law‑enforcement mobilization in the state, they decided to move to Oregon.
The couple and their child joined Linares and her family in Portland in late October, sharing Linares’ apartment until they rented their own two months later, she said.
Last Friday, Linares became worried when she couldn’t reach her friends. She and her husband drove to their apartment and, finding it empty, checked ICE’s online detainee locator system and found the couple and their child at the Texas detention facility.
She still can’t reconcile what happened to her friends. Both parents have university degrees, Linares said. They’re respectful and like to help others, she said.
“They are good people, not criminals,” Linares said. “They were looking for stability. They wanted to help their families in Venezuela.”
Linares is most concerned about the child. Her father told the family this week that the girl had a fever over the weekend and a doctor at the detention facility didn’t attend to her until Wednesday.
Multiple reports and lawsuits have documented children being denied adequate medical care while in ICE custody, including at the family detention center in Dilley.
A recent news report shows ICE is currently detaining more than 70,000 people nationwide, including at least 6,000 “family units” – parents and underage children taken into custody as families.
Oregon legislators said they’re monitoring the family’s case and called on federal agencies to protect the child’s health and safety and respect due process.
“The immediate health and wellbeing of this child must be the top priority,” state Rep. Ricki Ruiz, a Democrat from Gresham, told The Oregonian/OregonLive via a written statement. “We urgently call for the child to receive appropriate medical care without delay and for the family to be afforded due process and access to legal counsel.”
ICE Agent Filmed at Man’s Front Door Warning ‘We’re Gonna Come Back for Your Whole Family’ as Immigration Raids Reach Maine
Biddeford, Maine, resident Cristian Vaca told The Associated Press that he was “terrified” during the encounter, saying, “it made me think about my son and his innocence, that he didn’t know what was happening”
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Kyler Alvord leads PEOPLE’s politics coverage as a news editor for the brand. He joined the publication on the crime beat.
NEED TO KNOW
- Maine resident Cristian Vaca captured an ICE agent on camera outside his front door warning, “We’re gonna come back for your whole family”
- Vaca, an Ecuador native who says he has a work permit and upcoming immigration hearing, told The Associated Press afterward that he was “terrified” during the encounter and it made him concerned about his son
- ICE launched a new immigration enforcement operation in Maine on Tuesday, Jan. 20, amid growing unease over the agency’s aggressive actions in Minnesota
Soon after Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched a new operation in Maine, Ecuadorian immigrant Cristian Vaca was faced with a harrowing warning from federal agents standing outside his front door.
In cellphone footage taken by Vaca from inside his Biddeford home at the end of an interaction with immigration officers, an ICE agent puts his face against the window of the front door and says, “We’re gonna come back for your whole family, OK?”
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Vaca spoke to The Associated Press after the video was posted to social media on Wednesday, Jan. 21, saying in an interview translated from Spanish, “What happened is that in the morning, around 10 or 11, I looked out the window and they were taking photos.”
“Their threat was always was to come back for my family. If I didn’t leave and go with them, they would come back for my family. The threat was always against my family,” he told the AP.
“Honestly, I felt terrified, like any person in this situation when your family is threatened,” he added, “and it made me think about my son and his innocence, that he didn’t know what was happening while I was interacting with them.”
Vaca said he came to the United States from Ecuador in September 2023, and had a hearing scheduled with a judge in his immigration case but his court date got postponed. He said he has a work permit and Social Security number.
PEOPLE sought comment from the Department of Homeland Security on the circumstances surrounding officers’ visit to Vaca’s residence.
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Officials from the DHS confirmed on Wednesday that they had kicked off a new immigration enforcement operation in Maine on the day prior titled, “Operation Catch of the Day.”
In a statement shared with CBS News, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin insisted that the operation is targeting immigrants who are both in the United States illegally and have committed crimes. She also accused Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills — a 2026 Senate candidate — of failing to cooperate with federal authorities.
On Friday afternoon, DHS told PEOPLE that “the brave men and women of ICE” arrested more than 100 people in the first three days of the operation.
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The Maine immigration raids come amid widespread criticism of ICE’s actions in other cities around the nation, most recently in the Minneapolis area where U.S. citizen Renee Good was fatally shot in her vehicle on Jan. 7, a Venezuelan man was shot in the leg during an arrest on Jan. 14, and anti-ICE protesters have faced reported brutality.
Footage of agents clashing with protesters, crashing into vehicles and going up to homes in Minneapolis have spread through social media, and Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota if necessary to squash anti-ICE protests with military force.
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This week, a viral image showed 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos being detained by agents in a Minneapolis suburb after his father, an Ecuadorian immigrant, was targeted while the two were returning home from Liam’s preschool.
After his father had been detained, ICE agents allegedly asked Liam to knock on the door to his home to see if any other people were inside, essentially “using a 5-year-old as bait,” The Washington Post reported, citing Columbia Heights Public Schools.
The school district claimed that another adult living in the home, who had been outside at the time, “begged the agents” to leave Liam with them, but ICE agents refused, according to the outlet.
Liam’s older brother, a middle school student, returned home 20 minutes later to find his father and little brother had been taken away, the paper noted.
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Data obtained by University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project has shown that nearly 75,000 people arrested by ICE during Trump’s first nine months in office had no criminal record.
That data, which was compiled by an internal ICE office and made public in a lawsuit filed against the agency, showed that almost one-third of those arrested in that timeframe had no criminal record. For those who had been convicted in the past, the data doesn’t distinguish between minor offenses and violent crimes.
Though data on how many Americans have been swept up in immigration arrests remains incomplete, ProPublica identified more than 170 cases where U.S. citizens were detained at raids and protests in the first nine months of Trump’s second presidency.
