MINNEAPOLIS — Gabi has big brown eyes, pigtails, and a genetic condition that makes her bones brittle. They fracture easily, leaving the 2-year-old in such pain that her mother quit her job cleaning offices to stay home and cradle her in the one-bedroom apartment they share with six relatives.
When federal immigration agents descended on their city, officers deported Gabi’s father and detained her aunt.
Gabi was born in the U.S. and is an American citizen. Her best chance to stand, or even walk, someday is a complex surgery on her legs and feet that was scheduled for January. But her mother, too terrified to take out the garbage let alone venture through the city to a hospital, canceled the procedure. KFF Health News agreed to only partially identify the patients and their families in this article because they fear becoming targets of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“I want more than anything for my baby to walk,” her mother said in Spanish, as Gabi cooed and wriggled in her arms, a feeding tube snaking from her stomach to an IV pole. “But with the situation that’s happening, I canceled the surgery and all the physical therapy appointments” that would have …