05/15/2026
Dr. Rubeliz "Bibi" Bolivar -- the emergency room physician who was detained with her 5-year-old daughter at a Texas airport last month after Customs and Border Protection officers told her that her valid U.S. work permit didn't matter because "no documents from Venezuela are valid" -- was released from federal custody on Wednesday. She spent more than four weeks in detention. She walked out on $7,000 bond, with an ankle monitor strapped to her leg, and wiped away tears as her program director met her at the door.
"My wife is an incredible mother and the heart of our family," her husband, Milenko Faria, said on the eve of her release. "These past weeks have been the hardest of our lives, watching our daughter miss her mother and feeling so powerless. For the first time in weeks, we can breathe again."
Here's what the Trump administration accomplished by detaining Dr. Bolivar: they spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to keep an ER doctor out of one of the most underserved emergency rooms in the country for a month. They separated a 5-year-old U.S. citizen from her mother. They forced her husband to attend the asylum interview they had waited more than a decade for -- alone.
They subjected a woman with a valid work permit, two pending immigration cases, and no criminal record to more than four weeks in a federal immigration detention facility notorious for overcrowding and inadequate medical care. And at the end of it all, she walked out and will be heading back to her residency to resume treating patients in a Rio Grande Valley ER -- a region that is so understaffed that the ratio of doctors to patients is roughly half the national average.
Dr. Bolivar's case is not an aberration. It is what the Trump administration's immigration policy looks like in practice -- chaotic, cruel, and staggeringly short-sighted. While the White House posts videos on its own website celebrating ICE for "taking out the trash" -- while Trump calls immigrants "animals" who are "poisoning the blood of our country" and DHS refers to detainees as "scumbags" in official government press releases -- the people actually being swept up look nothing like the monsters the administration wants you to imagine with their xenophobic hatemongering.
According to data from ICE's own records analyzed by the Cato Institute, just 5 percent of people in ICE custody have a violent criminal conviction. More than three-quarters of those arrested had no criminal record -- of those with records, most were convicted of traffic violations, immigration offenses, or other low-level crimes. Many have active asylum cases. Many are legally in the country. Many are taxpayers, parents, neighbors -- people contributing to communities that depend on them. People like Dr. Bolivar.
These are the people being targeted by Trump's mass deportation machine -- not because they pose any threat, but because Stephen Miller's arrest quotas demand bodies, and people with legal status who show up to airports and checkpoints and scheduled immigration appointments are the easiest ones to grab.
Most of those swept up don't have the resources or institutional support that Dr. Bolivar had. The American College of Emergency Physicians -- the largest emergency medicine organization in the country -- publicly demanded her release. More than 20 medical societies wrote to Secretaries Rubio and Mullin calling for a national-interest exemption for physicians. Her supervising physicians called her "brilliant, dedicated and beloved by patients and staff alike." Members of Congress intervened on her behalf.
Even with all of that -- the medical establishment, the legal advocacy, the public outcry, the congressional pressure -- it still took more than four weeks to get one ER doctor out of a detention facility and back to the patients who needed her. Imagine what happens to everyone who doesn't have the American College of Emergency Physicians fighting for them.
The Trump administration's mass deportation machine is tearing apart families and communities across the country. Here's how you can help:
--> Call your Senators and Representatives at (202) 224-3121 and demand due process for the tens of thousands of immigrants who are being detained without criminal charges
--> To help immigrants who have been arrested or detained, you can support the critical work of the National Immigrant Justice Center at https://immigrantjustice.org/ways-to-help
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For children's books that encourage empathy and understanding of Mighty Girl immigrants of the past and present, visit our blog post, "A New Land, A New Life: 25 Mighty Girl Books About the Immigrant Experience" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12855
For books for children and teens about the importance of standing up for truth, decency, and justice, even in dark times, visit our blog post, "Dissent Is Patriotic: 50 Books About Women Who Fought for Change," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14364
For books for tweens and teens about girls living under real-life authoritarian regimes throughout history that will help them appreciate how precious democracy truly is, visit our blog post "The Fragility of Freedom: Mighty Girl Books About Life Under Authoritarianism" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=32426
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To read more about Dr. Bolivar's release in the New York Times, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/us/venezuelan-doctor-released-from-immigration-custody-texas.html?unlocked_article_code=1.iVA.l6GL.qDvFFRTuGOFl&smid=url-share
To read about how Trump's policies are making the doctor shortage in the U.S. worse, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/04/us/trumps-immigration-policy-sidelines-foreign-doctors-amid-shortage.html?unlocked_article_code=1.iVA.PhWG.MRlJ0GAYnlh5&smid=url-share
