Cut off your toddler with a medical condition from adequate care, or from his family: that is the choice confronting a Whitehorse family facing imminent deportation.

Sergio Rojas and Linda Martinez have two sons. The younger, Jonathan, suffers from skull deformation and a neck muscle disorder.

Jonathan, three, is also a Canadian citizen, having been born in the Yukon. The rest of his family do not have citizenship or resident status.

The Department of Citizenship and Immigration told the couple about two weeks ago they have until March 4 to leave the country.

Technically, they have the option of leaving Jonathan behind as a ward of the state.

Emotionally, they do not.

“We can’t go without him,” Martinez told the Star this morning at Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport.

“It’s scary. In Mexico, there’s not anything for Jonathan ... It’s no good because Jonathan is born here. He is a Canadian citizen.

“I feel very bad,” she said.

Martinez sobbed as she saw her partner and their seven-year-old son off before their 8 a.m. flight to Vancouver, where Rojas, who held back tears as they hugged, will handle pre-departure paperwork.

She and Jonathan are slated to join them there Wednesday.

Jan Stick, the NDP critic for Health and Social Services, called the family’s situation “a human tragedy” after she learned about it late last week.

“To me, this is just such a cruel decision that no family should have to face,” she said at the airport alongside Opposition Leader Liz Hanson and MLA Jim Tredger.

“Do you take a child with you that needs special supports, that’s not going to receive them in another country? Or do you leave that child behind so they can get the supports they need, but they don’t have their parents with them any longer?

“It’s an untenable situation,” she added.

Stick said the ideal outcome would see the family remain together in Whitehorse as landed immigrants “and be able to work and be a part of this great community.”

The family had applied for permanent residence on compassionate grounds. The application was rejected, along with a subsequent appeal, despite Jonathan’s condition.

“If that’s not a reason to let them stay on compassionate grounds, I don’t know what is,” Stick said.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s website states immigrants should apply for residence on humanitarian and compassionate grounds if they “would suffer excessive hardship” by returning to their home country.

The federal department said in reply to a Star email that it could not speak to the case without the family’s written consent.

MP Ryan Leef spoke with Rojas over the weekend and met with Immigration Minister Chris Alexander today in Ottawa.

Leef said through a spokesperson he would address the issue publicly on Tuesday.

The Yukon NDP is also consulting with its federal party’s Citizenship and Immigration critic.

The Opposition has circulated a petition calling on Ottawa to rescind the deportation order and review the family’s permanent residence application “to keep the family together in Canada while preserving Jonathan’s right as a Canadian to accessible and high-quality medical care,” the NDP stated in a release.

Jonathan suffers from plagiocephaly — sometimes referred to as “flat head syndrome” — and congenital torticollis.

He spends much of each week at the Yukon Child Development Centre and has received treatment at the B.C. Children’s Hospital.

Symptoms of torticollis in newborns and infants include damage to the neck muscles, especially on one side, which can lead to a flattened head from consistently lying or resting on the same side, according to the Stanford Children’s Health network.

The condition demands specialized therapy.

Plagiocephaly, a malformation of the skull that can develop in the womb or during birth, is “considered a medically benign condition,” according to a study published by the National Institute of Health in 2008.

Nonetheless, “children with this condition should be screened and monitored for developmental delays or deficits,” the study states.

A B.C. Children’s Hospital summary from 2008, co-written by the institution’s former head of pediatric neurosurgery, wrote that plagiocephaly “is not thought to be associated with developmental delays or other medical issues, but the effect on cosmetic appearance can cause significant parental concern.”

The child development centre wrote a letter stating Jonathan would have difficulty accessing therapeutic services in Mexico or Nicaragua — his mother’s country of origin.