The mother arrived at the hospital last week in need of an emergency caesarean section, saying she had crossed the border to run an errand in town, not so her baby would be born an American citizen.
She assured the doctor that she arrived at the hospital just "because [she] was here."
Dr. Rolando Guerrero listened skeptically. "They always have a story," he said after delivering her 8-pound boy, Dylan.
Doctors here at Starr County Memorial Hospital deliver about 30 babies a month, including those of mothers in the country illegally, hospital officials said. In this county in the heart of the impoverished Rio Grande Valley, so-called anchor babies have been delivered for decades, some to women who have already settled in Texas, others to those who crossed the river expressly to give birth on U.