This article was originally published on Monday, October 5, 2015 and is only presented for historical purposes. The information below may no longer be relevant or accurate.
Cesar Calderon, 26, knows what it means to be shut out of insurance.
A DACA recipient and student at Mesa Community College in Mesa, Arizona, he has been disabled since he was nearly killed in a car crash in 2006. After spending several weeks in a coma in an Arizona hospital, the staff there decided to transfer him to a clinic in Mexico in a controversial practice known as medical repatriation, since at the time he was undocumented and lacked insurance. “I couldn’t believe that the country I call home would do that me,” he said later. His mother left her four other sons with family in the U.S. and accompanied Calderon to the facility in Mexico.