"Think of a pound of butter; that size and we're compromising that infant's life," says Rosemary Petrakos, the vice-president of women and children surgery perioperative at Windsor Regional Hospital.
Local health officials want more than a verbal assurance from Canada's immigration minister that high-risk pregnant mothers, premature and newborn infants and young children who are refugees from the seven countries targeted in the U.S. travel ban will not be held up at the border if they require medical care in Detroit.
Windsor West MP Brian Masse questioned the immigration minister in the House of Commons and will ask for those assurances in writing, but a letter is also being sent to Homeland Security in the U.S. asking for the same guarantee.
Petrakos says many refugee mothers are malnourished and have not received pre-natal care. Many of them are considered at high-risk to deliver their babies prematurely, and Windsor Regional Hospital is not equipped to treat infants born earlier than 26 weeks.
"If the mom delivered here and we have this small infant, and the infant goes to Detroit, how do the parents get over?" she asks.
"We have really sick kids, that get sick really fast. Can't take the 401, can't fly. They need to go to Detroit," she continues. "And how do you send an eight-year-old across the border without their parents?"
Hospital CEO David Musyj says part of the problem is U.S. Border Protection officials are trying to interpret the executive order, and a letter will help speed up the passage.
"You have to remember, the border guards are human beings as well, and they might have their own individual interpretation," says Musyj. "The last thing we need is a situation -- these things generally occur in the middle of the night -- they interpret the executive order differently or are unaware of any verbal indication that things should be okay and let the individual through, and there's a delay."
While Petrakos says just one or two refugees require medical care across the border a month, she says if life is lost because of delays, "it would break everybody's heart."
- With files from Paul Pedro
