Crime & Law

Ofelia Torres, Chicago Teen Who Battled Cancer While Her Father Was Detained by ICE, Has Died

Ofelia Torres, the 16-year-old whose cancer battle gained national attention last fall after her father was detained by immigration agents outside a suburban Home Depot, has died.

Torres’ family announced in a statement that the Lake View High School junior died following a battle with Stage 4 alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer.

“Ofelia was heroic and brave in the face of ICE’s detention and threatened deportation of her father,” Kalman Resnick, an attorney representing Torres’ father Ruben Torres Maldonado, said in a statement. “We mourn Ofelia’s passing, and we hope that she will serve as a model for us all for how to be courageous and to fight for what’s right to our last breaths.”

Maldonado, a home renovator and painter who has lived in Chicago since 2003, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at a Home Depot in Niles last October at the height of the Trump administration’s “Midway Blitz” enforcement operation.

According to a GoFundMe page created to help cover Maldonado’s legal fees, Maldonado was coming out of the Home Depot on Dempster Street in Niles with supplies for his job on Oct. 18 when ICE agents called out to Maldonado by name.

He attempted to ignore them and got in his car and locked the door. One of the ICE agents then started smashing the passenger side of his car and another agent pulled out a gun. Maldonado then got out of the car, where he was then forced on the ground and detained.

Maldonado was initially held at the ICE processing facility in suburban Broadview before he was moved to Indiana.

In a video shared on social media raising awareness of her father’s detainment, Ofelia said, “My dad, like many other fathers, is a hardworking person who wakes up early in the morning and goes to work without complaining, thinking about his family. I find it so unfair that hardworking immigrant families are being targeted just because they were not born here.”

Ofelia Torres had been receiving cancer treatment at Lurie Children’s Hospital, but Resnick said her chemotherapy was put on hold due to a decline in her physical and emotional health after her father was detained.

Maldonado was released from ICE custody in late October after a judge granted him a $2,000 bond.

“I can’t wait to see my dad,” Torres said in a statement after that hearing. “We need him to be at home with me and our family.”

Last week, an immigration judge in Chicago ruled that Maldonado was conditionally entitled to receive “cancellation of removal” due to the hardships his deportation would cause his U.S. citizen children, providing him with a pathway to lawful permanent residence and eventually U.S. citizenship.

That hearing took place three days before Torres died, and she was present at the proceedings over Zoom, according to her family.

Private funeral arrangements have been made, her family said. The online fundraiser, which has collected nearly $140,000 as of Monday morning, remains active.