{"id":302041,"date":"2025-10-14T07:23:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T07:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/302041\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T07:23:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T07:23:16","slug":"houston-teen-separated-from-mother-gets-emergency-surgery-amid-immigration-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/302041\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston teen separated from mother gets emergency surgery amid immigration battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

HOUSON<\/strong> \u2013 A Houston mother is urgently seeking to be reunited with her 15-year-old son, Emmanuel Gonzalez Garcia, who is currently hospitalized and facing emergency surgery.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez Garcia, who has autism, disappeared on Oct. 4 while his mother was selling fruit on the northwest side of Houston. He went to use the restroom and did not return. <\/p>\n

Houston police found him the next day at a McDonald\u2019s off Airline Drive near the North Freeway.<\/p>\n

Authorities said Gonzalez Garcia told them he was homeless, from another country, and had no local family. <\/p>\n

After what HPD said was four hours of trying to track down an appropriate contact, with the help of U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE), authorities contacted the Department of Health and Human Service\u2019s Office of Refugee Resettlement.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez Garcia has been in their care since.<\/p>\n

ORIGINAL STORY: <\/b>Houston mother separated from son with autism after he\u2019s placed in federal immigration custody<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

However, immigrant rights group FIEL Houston<\/a> and Gonzalez Garcia\u2019s mother say the teen has the cognitive ability of a four or five-year-old and would not have been able to provide accurate information or carry on a proper conversation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe demand to know what happened, and we demand his immediate return to his mom. Because now, during this stage of recovery, there\u2019s no better place for him to be with mom,\u201d Cesar Espinoza, executive director of FIEL Houston, said.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez Garcia is currently hospitalized at Texas Children\u2019s Hospital with appendicitis and was expected to undergo emergency surgery on Monday evening. <\/p>\n

His mother has only been able to communicate with him via video chat, but was able to see him late Monday at the hospital. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese last days have been very difficult for her, and she\u2019s quite alone. And how even she knows that Emmanuel can\u2019t quite express that he wants her to be with him, but she knows that he\u2019s scared,\u201d Espinoza said.<\/p>\n

Houston police confirmed that ICE was contacted when Emmanuel was found, but an ICE spokesperson said he was never in their custody.<\/p>\n

HPD also confirmed that Gonzalez Garcia disappeared in April, but the missing person alert was canceled after a couple days and he was reunited with his family.<\/p>\n

The family and FIEL emphasized that Gonzalez Garcia was and is not an unaccompanied minor.<\/p>\n

The Office of Refugee Resettlement has not responded to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSON \u2013 A Houston mother is urgently seeking to be reunited with her 15-year-old son, Emmanuel Gonzalez Garcia,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":302042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[142168,4345,5410,425,358,3187],"class_list":{"0":"post-302041","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-fiel-houston","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-ice","11":"tag-local","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-tx"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115371324566942791","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}