Chicago teen who pushed for parents’ release from ICE custody dies of cancer

A Chicago-born teen who advocated for his parents’ release from US immigration authorities’ custody while fighting terminal cancer has died shortly after reuniting with them in Mexico, his family has told media outlets.

The parents of 18-year-old Kevin González had been taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in Arizona in mid-April after they crossed the US border from Mexico without permission in an attempt to see him in Chicago as his health waned. González since then traveled to be with relatives in Mexico, and in recent days he had publicly pleaded for them to be released from ICE custody so they could be with him as he battled metastatic stage four colon cancer.

A federal judge ordered the release of Isidro González Avilés, 48, and Norma Anabel Ramírez Amaya, 43, on Thursday, as the Spanish-language US news network Telemundo reported. And, as Telemundo also noted, they had been able to be back with Kevin at his maternal grandmother’s house in Durango, Mexico, on Saturday afternoon.

Kevin’s brother, Jovany Ramírez, and an aunt of his then reportedly told the network that he had died late Sunday afternoon.

In an interview with the network at that house during Kevin’s final hours, González Avilés described kneeling at his son’s feet, asking for forgiveness if he had ever let him down in anything and telling him he loved him very much.

“I don’t think he deserved the suffering he had,” a weeping González Avilés said on video.

Democratic US congressman Jesús “Chuy” García of Chicago issued a statement Sunday saying the Gonzalezes “should have had more time together”.

The statement from García, who was born in Durango himself before his family immigrated to the US, added that he would “honor Kevin and his family by vowing to continue fighting for a humane immigration system that treats everyone with dignity”.

Kevin, a US citizen who was born in Chicago but raised in Mexico, received his terminal diagnosis in January. He was visiting relatives in Chicago and had fallen ill at the time of his diagnosis, and he began undergoing treatment there.