Second Venezuelan physician detained in South Texas as medical groups demand exemption

A Venezuelan emergency medicine resident was detained by immigration agents Saturday, April 11, at a South Texas airport, the second physician taken into custody in the Rio Grande Valley in less than a week.

Rubeliz Bolivar, M.D., a resident in the emergency medicine program at the South Texas Health System in McAllen, was detained by Customs and Border Protection officers after checking in for an early morning flight to Santa Barbara, California.

Bolivar was traveling with her 5-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, to join her husband for an asylum interview scheduled the following week, according to her husband, Milenko Faria, who spoke with The New York Times.

Bolivar has lived in the United States for a decade and holds a work permit valid until 2030. Faria said that officers dismissed the document on the spot.

"She showed them her work permit," Faria said. "They told her, 'That is not valid. No documents from Venezuela are valid.'"

Their daughter was released to a relative later that night.

A second detention in a week

Bolivar's arrest closely followed the detention of Ezequiel Veliz, M.D., a family physician and 2025 resident of the year at UT Health, Rio Grande Valley, who was stopped the evening of Monday, April 6, at a Border Patrol checkpoint in Sarita while driving to Houston with his husband, Joseph Williams, an American citizen.

Veliz was featured in an April 4 New York Times investigation that identified more than 100 foreign physicians sidelined by a January policy freezing visa extensions, work permits and green card adjudications for citizens of 39 countries.

The list, compiled by the affected physicians themselves, included doctors working across primary care, surgery, pulmonology and research.

"I am a physician in a federally recognized medically underserved area," Veliz said before his detention. "In an area like this, missing even a resident physician like me, is a lot. That means that hundreds of patients are not going to be seen."

Physician groups respond

The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and the Emergency Medicine Residents' Association (EMRA) issued a joint statement Sunday, April 12, condemning Bolivar's detention and calling for her immediate release. ACEP President L. Anthony Cirillo, M.D., FACEP, was attending the Texas College of Emergency Physicians chapter meeting in Rockwall when the news broke and met with Bolivar's residency colleagues to coordinate a response.

"Dr. Bolivar followed our laws, obtained valid work authorization, and dedicated herself to caring for patients in one of the most underserved regions in the country," Cirillo said in the statement. "Detaining physicians who are here legally and serving communities in need of vital emergency care is not targeted enforcement. It is a threat to the health of the American people, and it must stop."

EMRA President Pauline Wiltz, D.O., framed the detention in personal terms in letters sent to Texas state legislators.

"Dr. Bolivar is a frontline emergency medicine resident and a mother. Every shift she misses is care delayed for patients in crisis," Wiltz said. "Every moment in detention, her child is kept from the safety she deserves. This isn't just policy, these are people. It's a family. It's a physician our communities need and depend on."

Days before Bolivar's detention, ACEP joined more than 20 medical societies in an April 8 letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin requesting a formal medical national-interest exemption. The coalition asked for four specific changes:

1. An exemption from across-the-board adjudicative holds once security and background checks are complete.
2. Expedited processing aligned to academic calendars and patient care obligations.
3. Clear guidance to adjudicators and consular officers that physicians warrant heightened processing priority.
4. Improved transparency on case status for physicians and employers.

That letter followed a Feb. 27 appeal from American Medical Association (AMA) CEO John Whyte, M.D., M.P.H., to the same cabinet secretaries. Whyte cited national interest and documented patient harm, noting that 900 patients in one rural area lost adequate care after a single physician was removed.

Fallout in an underserved region

The Rio Grande Valley is federally designated as medically underserved and relies heavily on international medical graduates to fill residency slots and staff hospitals. Bolivar's supervising physicians said her absence will be felt immediately.

"Dr. Bolivar is one of the finest residents we have had the privilege to work with," said Michael Menowsky, M.D., who supervises residents in the emergency medicine program at the South Texas Health System. "She is brilliant, dedicated and beloved by patients and staff alike. Her detention is heartbreaking and deeply disturbing."

Francisco Torres, M.D., another supervising physician, said that "detaining doctors who are serving underserved populations is beyond reckless — it is cruel."

McAllen mayor pro-tem Victor Haddad said in a statement that Bolivar "did everything right. She followed the rules. She dedicated her life to healing others."

Beyond her clinical work, Bolivar has appeared at community forums on diabetes management, heat stroke prevention and emergency preparedness.

The policy behind the detentions

The January adjudication pause stems from a December travel ban covering 39 countries, along with Palestinian Authority travel document holders. DHS has said decisions on cases from "high-risk countries" were placed on hold "to ensure they are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible."

The freeze lands in a health care system facing a shortage of approximately 86,000 physicians by 2036, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) — the gap widening as the U.S. population ages and more physicians retire.

Foreign-born physicians account for 25% of those practicing nationally, and more than 60% of international medical graduates work in primary care.

For the 2025–2026 Match, there were 41,000 residency positions available and only 32,000 applicants from U.S. medical schools, with roughly 7,000 foreign-trained physicians filling the gap after board exams and background checks.

Rebecca Andrews, M.D., MACP, chair of the Board of Regents for the American College of Physicians (ACP), told the Times that "bottlenecking the influx of these physicians will leave our health care system in a tenuous state."

Related content: Match Day 2026: How did family medicine fare with medical graduates?

What practices should be watching

For practices that sponsor or employ foreign-born physicians, the current environment has prompted a fresh look at visa documentation and contingency planning, even for employers whose workers are not from the 39 affected countries.

Katie Russell, J.D., a partner at Brown Immigration Law in Cleveland, Ohio, said much of the recent enforcement activity affecting employers has been administrative rather than operational, with scrutiny focused on Form I-9 accuracy, record retention and visa petition adherence.

"It's not so much dramatic enforcement operations that we're seeing being launched on practices. It's really administrative," Russell said on an episode of Off the Chart: A Business of Medicine Podcast. "So it's compliance driven, not operationally disruptive, but it is still good to make sure that you're in a good position."

Russell said practices sponsoring non-citizen physicians should track visa expiration dates closely and be aware that material changes in job duties or compensation can require amended filings with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

She also recommended that practices designate a staff contact — typically an administrator or HR lead — trained to respond to any federal immigration inquiry and to distinguish between an administrative warrant, which does not authorize entry into private spaces, and a judicial warrant signed by a judge.

ACEP, EMRA and the Texas chapter said they are coordinating outreach to Rep. Monica De La Cruz, who represents the McAllen-area 15th Congressional District, and other members of the Texas delegation to push for Bolivar's release.

Faria said his wife had two pending immigration cases at the time of her detention: an asylum application on which she was a derivative beneficiary, and a green card petition tied to his own employer-sponsored application.