A 61-year-old grandmother Helen Huynh, of Garden Grove, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia in early 2017. Her sister is a perfect but lives in Vietnam and was denied entry into the United States three times.
Nguyen applied for a medical emergency visa with doctor's letters from UCI Medical Center but was still denied.
"We feel like we're just so close, yet so far," said Yvonne Murray, Huynh's daughter. "UCI wrote the letter that said that my aunt has no intention of staying past her visa. That she's planning on returning to Vietnam as soon as she's done with the stem cell transplant."