Chicago
AP
—
A Chicago teen who spoke out for her father’s launch after he was detained final fall by immigration officers in a deportation case has died after battling a rare type of cancer.
Ofelia Giselle Torres Hidalgo, 16, died Friday from stage 4 alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, the household stated in a assertion. Funeral preparations are personal.
The teenager was identified in December 2024 with the aggressive type of gentle tissue cancer and had been present process chemotherapy and radiation remedy.
An immigration choose in Chicago dominated three days earlier than Ofelia’s loss of life that her father, Ruben Torres Maldonado, was conditionally entitled to obtain “cancellation of removal” because of the hardships his deportation would trigger his kids who had been born in the United States and are US residents, in keeping with the assertion despatched by an lawyer representing Torres Maldonado.
The ruling offers Torres Maldonado with a path to turning into a lawful everlasting resident and eventual US citizenship, the assertion stated.
Ofelia was current through Zoom finally week’s listening to.
“Ofelia was heroic and brave in the face of ICE’s detention and threatened deportation of her father,” stated Kalman Resnick, Torres Maldonado’s lawyer. “We mourn Ofelia’s passing, and we hope that she will serve as a model for us all for how to be courageous and to fight for what’s right to our last breaths.”
Torres Maldonado, a painter and residential renovator, was detained October 18 at a Home Depot retailer in suburban Chicago as the realm was on the middle of a main immigration crackdown dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz,” which started in early September.
Ofelia was present process remedy when she appeared in October in a video posted on a GoFundMe web page arrange for the household.
“My dad, like many other fathers, is a hard-working person who wakes up early in the morning and goes to work without complaining, thinking about his family,” she stated in the video. “I find it so unfair that hardworking immigrant families are being targeted just because they were not born here.”
In a wheelchair, she attended a hearing for her father in October. The household’s attorneys instructed a choose at the moment that she was launched from the hospital simply a day earlier than her father’s arrest so she might see household and mates. They added Ofelia had been unable to proceed remedy “because of the stress and disruption.”
Torres Maldonado’s attorneys petitioned for his launch as his deportation case went via the system. A choose ordered a bond listening to after ruling in October his detention was unlawful and violated Torres Maldonado’s due course of rights.
A choose later cited Torres Maldonado’s lack of prison historical past while allowing his release on a $2,000 bond.
Lawyers stated Torres Maldonado entered the US in 2003. He and his accomplice, Sandibell Hidalgo, even have a youthful son.
The Department of Homeland Security had alleged he had been residing illegally in the US for years and has a historical past of driving offenses, together with driving with out a legitimate license, with out insurance coverage and rushing.