On Wednesday night, MSNBC’s All In ran a story about an ill 4-year-old named Sofia, who was supposedly being heartlessly forced out of the country by the Trump administration without recourse. The suffering of this child was deeply saddening, but the story omitted extremely key information. MSNBC was using this child's brutal and agonizing health complications with Short Bowel Syndrome to make the claim that Trump was “forcing” her out of the country and that she might die after a few days.
Host Chris Hayes had this to say while introducing the story:
Last month, the Trump administration revoked permission to stay here and ordered the family to leave immediately. This little 4-year-old girl Sofia is not a criminal or a terrorist or Tren De Aragua or obviously, any threat of any kind. She’s not a danger to Americans, but she is among the many people targeted in the mass deportation drag-net happening around the country under orders of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller.
Hayes made the claim that the Trump administration “revoked permission to stay here and ordered the family to leave immediately.” This statement was not entirely true.
While it is factual that their humanitarian aid parole status through the CBP One App was canceled (because of the termination of the process entirely), the DHS themselves stated that “Any reporting that Vargas and her family are actively being deported are FALSE. This family applied with USCIS for humanitarian parole on May 14, 2025, and the application is still being considered.”
This type of biased information was not only false but dangerously misleading by saying that the Trump administration was actively deporting this ill 4-year-old.
Hayes showed a clip of KNBC Reporter Michelle Valles who said this:
She’s got a medical condition called Short Bowel Syndrome, which prevents her from absorbing nutrients in food. They came here with permission in 2023 on humanitarian grounds to receive that lifesaving medical care, but last month the Trump administration ordered them to self deport. The mom tells us that according to doctors, the little girl could die within days if she is sent back to Mexico.
In this segment of the show they were essentially alluding to the fact that this little girl will be deported back to Mexico where she will die if she didn’t receive proper care. MSNBC was offering their audience slanted story telling by not laying out all the options available to the Vargas family on their immigration status.
If the DHS decided to revoke their parole, Sofia’s family had a few options. The Vargas family could elect to place their ill child under a guardian of their choosing, where she could still receive medical treatment in the United States, while her family left the U.S. and attempted to come back in legally. The next option their family had, if their parole was terminated; Sofia’s family could elect to bring her back with them to Mexico and look for treatment in their country of origin as they attempted to re-enter the U.S..
Later on in the show, Hayes interviewed the Vargas’s families lawyer, Gina Amato Lough, who stated this:
The equipment that Sofia relies on to deliver the nutrients to her system is not available outside of the United States, and her doctors have clearly ordered her and the other patients that are undergoing this treatment, to not leave the country.
Sofia used something called Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) that’s essentially a method of delivering vital nutrients directly into the bloodstream. It is used to help patients with Short Bowel Syndrome, like Sofia.
For her own lawyer to say that the equipment needed to deliver the nutrients “is not available outside of the United States,” was false. Mexico did have the TPN equipment needed for Sofia. The main problem could possibly be that the drug Gattex was not available in Mexico yet, so if the Vargas family felt as though they wouldn’t be able to find the treatment they need for Sofia in Mexico, then they can keep her in America per the DHS’s own rules and regulations.
This wouldn’t be the first time Hayes had stretched the truth to the public. Earlier this year, MSNBC settled a defamation lawsuit about a doctor they labeled the “uterus collector" in a story that Hayes reportedly stated “the reason it went viral” was because it “conjured the worst kind of like Third Reich, … sort of … Jim Crow, Mississippi Hospital history.” Showing that Hayes had done this manipulation of people's emotions to play into a specific narrative before.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to view.
MSNBC’s: All In With Chris Hayes
May, 28th, 2025
8:35:35 PM ESTCHRIS HAYES: In 2023, the little girl you see here who is being identified as “Sofia,” came to this country from Mexico with her parents. And the family was granted permission to temporarily stay here for humanitarian reasons. They applied for it and it was granted, because Sofia is ill and in need of life saving treatment. Now, all that is in jeopardy.
(...)
8:36:10 PM EST
MICHELLE VALLES (KNBC reporter): She’s got a medical condition called Short Bowel Syndrome, which prevents her from absorbing nutrients in food. They came here with permission in 2023 on humanitarian grounds to receive that lifesaving medical care, but last month the Trump administration ordered them to self deport. The mom tells us that according to doctors, the little girl could die within days if she is sent back to Mexico.
HAYES: Last month, the Trump administration revoked permission to stay here and ordered the family to leave immediately. This little 4-year-old girl Sofia is not a criminal or a terrorist or Tren De Aragua or obviously, any threat of any kind. She’s not a danger to Americans, but she is among the many people targeted in the mass deportation drag-net happening around the country under orders of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller.
Gina Amato Lough is one of the attorneys representing Sofia, she’s also the directing attorney for the Immigrants Rights Project, a public counsel, and she joins me now. Let me first just ask about the sort-of medical status of Sofia, in terms of the care that she needs and gets. My understanding from reading about her case was that she came very close to death in Mexico, and this is a treatable condition in some parts of the world, including the U.S., but they were having a hard time getting the care in Mexico for her. Is that right?
GINA AMATO LOUGH: Yes, that’s correct
(...)
8:38:50 PM EST
LOUGH: The equipment that Sofia relies on to deliver the nutrients to her system is not available outside of the United States, and her doctors have clearly ordered her and the other patients that are undergoing this treatment, to not leave the country.
HAYES: So her mother was sort of and the father dealing with this awful condition and trying to save their kid. And my understanding is that the mom applied to the U.S. government through the CBP app, right, to say, look, there's a category of humanitarian carve outs is that right for folks to come in under these circumstances?
LOUGH: Correct. They presented themselves at the border, the lawful way. They requested humanitarian parole for medical purposes, and the government granted them humanitarian parole. This was in July 2023, and they were granted humanitarian parole through the end of July of this year. But the current administration canceled their humanitarian parole without notice and without reason in April of this year.
(…)
