Advocates for the 6-year-old deaf Hayward boy who was recently deported to Colombia opened their legal fight to bring him and his family home Thursday, filing an emergency application to the Trump administration seeking his return to the Bay Area for much-needed medical care.
The administrative filing came as concern mounted Thursday for the wellbeing of Joseph Rodriguez, who was separated from parts of his cochlear implants last week when he was sent to Colombia, along with his mother and 4-year-old brother. He had been in the United States for about four years, as his mother sought asylum while escaping an abusive relationship that involved a man with gang ties in the South American country, according to the family’s lawyer.
The boy’s attorney, Niko De Bremaeker, announced that he had filed an application for humanitarian parole at 2:30 a.m. Thursday to the federal Department of Homeland Security. The filing is typically sought by people seeking admission for “urgent circumstances,” such as a pressing medical need or concerns that the applicant is at risk of human trafficking, domestic violence or abandonment, according to the agency’s website.
De Bremaeker asked that Joseph be returned to the Bay Area by March 18. Not doing so, he said, would place the boy at risk of infection, meningitis or worse by not receiving the ongoing attention he needs for his cochlear implants. Such devices involve surgical implants that help people with severe hearing impairments hear those around them, and they require ongoing adjustments and care.
“His doctors have said that without ongoing care, without treatment and without follow-up, he’s at risk of never being able to communicate in his lifetime,” De Bremaeker said. “This is very serious. DHS needs to act now, and allow this family to return.”
It was not immediately clear if the request might be slowed by the continuing partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
Hours after the filing was submitted, California’s public schools superintendent, Tony Thurmond, held a press conference demanding the boy be returned to his classes at the California School for the Deaf in Fremont. He framed the issue as an emergency for the boy’s social and lingual development, given how Joseph “is in a place where there is almost no one who can communicate with him in American Sign Language.”
“The reality is that right here in the United States of America, and right here at the California School for the Deaf, is the only place where Joseph can receive what it is that he needs to be healthy and to be supported,” said Thurmond, calling the boy’s deportation an “abduction.”
Thurmond said that he saw the boy on a video call Thursday and spoke to him through an American Sign Language interpreter. “Joseph made his intentions very clear,” the superintendent said, adding that the boy signed: “I want to come back to school.”
Calls for the boy’s return appeared to be growing this week.
On Thursday, Thurmond sent a formal letter to the Department of Homeland Security demanding action in the case. On Friday, East Bay Congressman — and fellow Democratic gubernatorial candidate — Eric Swalwell also was expected to send a letter to the agency, calling for the boy to be brought back, according to his spokesperson, Cassie Baloue.
Earlier this week, Swalwell called the expulsion “outrageous,” adding that “no sane human, no beating heart, would allow this to go on, and yet it does.” His remarks came as members of his staff were arriving in Colombia to deliver devices the boy needs to hear and communicate with those around him.
Other local officials, including Alameda County Supervisor Elisa Márquez and Hayward’s mayor pro tempore, George Syrop, have decried the child’s removal from the U.S., and the brazen means by which his listening devices were taken from him.
The furor dates to March 3, when Joseph Rodriguez, his 4-year-old brother and their mother — 28-year-old Lesley Rodriguez Gutierrez, who works as a childcare worker, cleaner and manicurist — were suddenly detained during what was supposed to be a check-in visit at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in San Francisco, according to the De Bremaeker, an attorney with the Oakland-based nonprofit Centro Legal de la Raza.
The woman said she was told to bring her children to the check-in because they needed to “renew the photos that they had in the system,” De Bremaeker said.
“ICE at no point explained to Ms. Rodriguez Gutierrez what was happening to them,” De Bremaeker said. “ICE agents took their photos and fingerprints, tried to force her to sign a document without explanation, and then pushed the family into a vehicle to be put on a flight to a faraway detention facility, all within minutes.”
ICE officials have repeatedly said over the last week that the mother had been under a removal order issued on Nov. 25, 2024, and that the family had been detained after “failing to comply with multiple directives to report.” It added that the family “received full due process,” and that the child’s mother chose to be removed from the country with her children. The agency’s statements have stressed that “ICE does not separate families.”
De Bremaeker has strongly disputed the agency’s claims, stressing that the mother had complied with all directives from ICE and had attended all of her court hearings.
On Thursday, De Bremaeker reiterated his claims that ICE officials barred the family from receiving the boy’s listening devices before whisking them away to South America — stressing that the government’s approach “shocks the conscience.”
“This is an incredible violation of his rights that this happened,” the attorney said.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.
‘DHS needs to act now’: Legal fight opens to bring deported 6-year-old deaf boy back to the Bay Area
