From the Kaizen Files: A Deaf Six Year Old, Deported - Without His Hearing Aids

Joseph Rodriguez is six years old and deaf. He attended the California School for the Deaf in Fremont and had lived for four years with his mother and his four year old brother in Hayward, a city in the Bay Area. Last week his mother, Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez, had been scheduled for a routine check in at the ICE office in California. Joseph was sick, she could not leave him alone - so she took him with her.

They were immediately detained. All three of them. And shortly afterward deported to Colombia, where his mother had fled from - she is an asylum seeker who escaped domestic violence. What stands out in this sequence: no hearing, no contact with her attorneys, no due process. Joseph’s hearing aids were left behind.

A relative tried to bring them to the boy while he was still in custody. ICE refused to accept them. The devices did not get through. Joseph was transferred from facility to facility - places not built for children, certainly not for children with significant special needs. His attorney said: “This is inhumane, illegal and unconstitutional.” Hearing aids are not glasses that can be quickly replaced. They are calibrated to an individual’s specific hearing loss, often cost several thousand dollars and are nearly impossible to replace in a situation like this. What that means for a six year old boy who is suddenly in another country, surrounded by people whose language he does not know, without the devices that allow him to hear - one has to truly imagine that for a moment.

We reached out to Congressman Eric Swalwell, Democrat from California and representative of the district in which the family lived. Swalwell sent a staff member from his office to Colombia over the weekend to personally deliver the hearing aids. He said publicly: “Think about this for a moment: A six year old child with a disability, suddenly in a foreign country, separated from the place he knew as home - surrounded by silence.” Together with the family’s attorneys, we are all working to secure a humanitarian entry permit so they can return. How long that will take remains open, but we are going full speed.

Swalwell, who is also running for governor of California, mentioned in this context the deportation of a six year old child with cancer - one of several cases that together form a picture that can no longer be dismissed as isolated incidents. People with disabilities, seriously ill children, individuals in ongoing asylum proceedings - they all end up in the same system, designed for speed, not for care.

The fact that Homeland Security now has only a few employees handling complaints about civil rights violations makes it unlikely that anyone will be held accountable internally. The pressure to change anything is structurally absent. What happened here had nothing to do with public safety. Joseph Rodriguez lived in Hayward for four years. He knew the school in Fremont, the language of the country, the daily life there. Now he is in Colombia, now again with his hearing aids, without an attorney, without an explanation.

To be continued .....