Funeral held for Chicago teen who battled cancer while fighting for father’s release from ICE detention

The blue Ford Mustang that Ofelia Giselle Torres Hidalgo’s father gifted her helped escort the 16-year-old’s ivory coffin to St. William Parish on Friday morning in the Northwest Side’s Montclare neighborhood.

Dozens of mourners hugged as they left the private funeral Mass on the cold, cloudy morning as church bells rang.

The Rev. Ryszard Gron, who delivered the funeral homily, told reporters outside the church that their community was “lucky to be accompanying the family of Ofelia.”

“Our future life will [always be based] on what we do here,” Gron said. “She will be happy now, and she is happy now in the hands of God.”

Ofelia died Feb. 13 after fighting metastatic alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of soft tissue cancer.

Last year, she began chemotherapy when the cancer progressed to Stage 4. In October, a day after she was released for the weekend from Lurie Children’s Hospital to see family and friends, her father, Ruben Torres Maldonado, was detained by ICE agents in Niles.

Doctors said Ofelia was unable to continue treatment “because of the stress and disruption” caused by the arrest.

Following widespread demands for his release, including a video made by Ofelia on social media, Maldonado was released on bond from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in late-October.

“Ofelia left us with a lot of light, a lot of strength,” said Reyna Torres, consul general of Mexico in Chicago, who spoke to reporters. “We at the consulate are inspired by her life and we will continue working for our community, inspired precisely by the fight Ofelia [dealt] with while she was here.”

A Chicago immigration judge this week conditionally allowed Maldonado to receive a “cancellation of removal” due to the impact his deportation would have on his children, who are U.S. citizens.

The ruling would provide him with a pathway to lawful permanent residency and eventually U.S. citizenship, according to the press release.

“Ofelia was heroic and brave in the face of ICE’s detention and threatened deportation of her father,” Kalman Resnick, her attorney said in a statement released the day after she died. “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.”

A GoFundMe page was started for Ofelia in October and has collected more than $150,000 as of Friday morning.

Contributing: Elleiana Green and Violet Miller