U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter to travel to Texas to visit detained Oregon child and family

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U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter will travel to Texas to visit the family detained by federal immigration agents in January in Portland while seeking health care for their 7-year-old daughter. 

Yohendry de Jesús Crespo Álvarez, 40, and his wife Darianny Liseth González de Crespo, 34, had just parked at Adventist Health Center on the morning of Jan. 16, expecting to seek medical help for their daughter’s bloody nose when U.S. Border Patrol agents forced the family out of their vehicle and detained them, according to a GoFund Me page created by a relative.

The family is being held at the South Texas Family Residential Center, located 70 miles south of San Antonio. It’s the main detention center where the federal government places immigrant families — and it’s the same place where a 5-year-old Minnesota boy was held with his father after agents took him into custody in his family’s driveway. That boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, returned home to Minnesota with his father this week after widespread attention and outrage spurred by the striking image of a federal agent holding Ramos by his Spiderman backpack, the boy’s head covered in a fluffy blue winter hat.

Immigration agents detain family taking 7-year-old child to Portland hospital

Immigration officials imposed a quarantine at the detention center, stopping all movement inside the facility following the discovery of two confirmed measles cases. 

“No child, but especially not a sick second grader on the way to urgent care, should be detained by ICE and then trapped in a facility with active measles cases,” Dexter said in a statement. “The inhumanity is staggering. I cannot stand by while my constituents’ rights are stripped, and our country’s values eroded.”

Dexter, a family physician and Democrat representing Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District spanning east Portland to Hood River, has made multiple oversight visits to federal immigration facilities to advocate for immigrants. Congress members under a 2019 law are entitled to unannounced visits to ICE detention facilities. 

She said the visit is to check on the family’s well-being, assess the conditions of their detention and ensure their access to due process. 

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security previously told the Capital Chronicle that the Crespo-González family illegally entered the U.S. in 2024 with a Biden-era app that let migrants without entry documents schedule appointments at designated ports of entry on the southern border. 

The family, originally from Venezuela, has an active asylum case and a court hearing on their case set in 2028.

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