Kevin González’s final wish was to see his detained parents one last time before his death.
The Chicago-born 18-year-old, who had been living in Mexico with his parents, traveled to Chicago to visit his brother during the holiday season. While visiting, he was diagnosed with colon cancer that had spread to his stomach and lungs, according to ABC Chicago. The prognosis was terminal— the cancer spread to his stomach and lungs and doctors said treatment was no longer viable.
His parents, Isidoro González Avilés and Norma Anabel Ramírez Amaya, were arrested April 14 near Douglas, Ariz. while attempting to cross the Mexican border to see their dying son after their request for a humanitarian visa was denied.
DHS told CNN on May 8 the visas were denied “due to their previous unlawful presence and entries into the United States,” and clarified to NBC Chicago that the parents had not applied for humanitarian parole but for B1/B2 tourist and business visitor visas.
In a video recorded from his hospital bed, González told his parents in Spanish, “I love you. I miss you. And you will always have an angel in heaven looking over you.”
The couple was held in immigration detention at the Florence Correctional Center, a privately run facility in central Arizona that has faced scrutiny over detainee medical care, where Avilés, a taxi and truck driver in Mexico, said they were treated “like criminals.”
Last week, González spoke with Telemundo making a last minute plea, urging his parents be released from federal custody so he could spend his final days with them.
“I’m simply asking you to do whatever you need to do to release them. I just want to spend my last days with them,” González said.
González checked out of the University of Chicago Medical Center and flew to his grandmother’s home in Mexico around a week before, hoping to reunite with his parents before he died.
Those wishes were answered on May 7 after a US district judge in Tucson ordered the expedited release of González’s parents so they could be by their dying son’s side. The couple was deported to Mexico on May 8, and Avilés and Amaya embraced their son in tears after taking a bus to Durango.
“We managed to make my son’s dream come true: to be with him again, to love him, to give him the love we could not give him during these months when he was not with us,” Avilés said to a CNN reporter after reuniting with his son.
Amaya, his mother, was also in tears. “These tears are from emotion, from seeing him again, from touching him again, from telling him how much I love him,” she told CNN.
González died Sunday afternoon surrounded by his family at his grandmother’s home in Durango.
In a post on X, US Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) criticized the Trump administration for its mass deportation agenda.
“This is disgusting and should never have happened. Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s inhumane mass deportation agenda has already torn too many families apart, ended too many lives.”
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), who represents the Chicago district where González received treatment, also issued a statement. “Rejecting visas to Kevin’s family did not protect our communities,” she said. “Putting families through the pain, stress, and fear of separation is not making our loved ones safer.”
