US reveals 8-year-old girl died in border patrol custody
A little Panamanian girl born with heart problems has died in Border Patrol custody, the second death in two weeks of a Latin American child in custody, according to a statement from the US government on Thursday.
The 8-year-old girl and her family were detained in Harlingen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the busiest border crossing corridors.
The Border Patrol’s parent company, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, has struggled with overcrowding at its facilities, spurred by a large surge in migrants and asylum seekers ahead of the expiration last week of a major regulation on immigration related to the COVID-19 pandemic .
The girl experienced “a medical emergency” and emergency medical services were called. They took her to hospital where she was pronounced dead on Wednesday, the service said. An autopsy has been ordered.
The girl’s name was Anadith Tanay Reyes Alvarez, said Honduran consul Jose Leonardo Navas, based in McAllen, Texas. He said she is from Panama, although her parents are from Honduras. The consul said she was traveling with her father, mother and two older siblings.
She was born with heart problems and had surgery in Panama three years ago, said her father who spoke to the consul.
The Home Affairs Department of Customs and Border Protection will investigate the girl’s death and the Inspector General of the Internal Security Service and the Harlingen police have been informed, Customs and Border Protection said.
Her death comes a week after a 17-year-old Honduran boy, Angel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza, who was traveling alone, died in the custody of the US Health and Human Services Department.
Also, a 4-year-old “medically frail unaccompanied child from Honduras” died earlier this year at a Michigan hospital, Health and Human Services said in its statement on Thursday. The agency said the child, who was in the care of the agency’s Refugee Resettlement Office, was taken to hospital on March 14 after “going into cardiac arrest”. She died three days later.
In recent weeks, the US has struggled with large numbers of migrants and asylum seekers flocking to the border awaiting the end of Title 42, a regulation that had curbed migration during the pandemic.
Last week, hundreds of arrivals were held in the open on US soil between two border walls in San Diego. Many lived for days on a limited Border Patrol diet of water and chips or granola bars and whatever volunteers or vendors passed through openings in the wall.
Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s US-Mexico border program, said Thursday that portable bathrooms were too crowded to use, forcing border arrivals to relieve themselves outside.
He also explained that Border Patrol told him to call 911 when volunteers came across an 8-month-old child within the walls who was “lethargic and vomiting”. The camp in the area has since been disbanded.
On Thursday, lawyers also warned of dangerous conditions for migrants and asylum seekers still in Mexico trying to enter the United States. Lawyers said at a press conference with journalists that they had visited a number of encampments in Mexico to assess conditions there and found little medical care.
Amy Fischer, director of refugee and migrant rights at Amnesty International USA, said that “almost everyone” they saw on the Mexican side of the border “had some sort of health issue they were dealing with.”
She said it was “almost universal” for migrants and asylum seekers to “lift up their shirts and show a rash or say my child had X type of illness”.
Last week, the Border Patrol began releasing asylum seekers in the US without notice to appear in immigration court, instead ordering them to report to an immigration office within 60 days. The move saves Border Patrol agents time-consuming processing tasks, freeing up space in detention facilities. A federal judge in Florida ordered an end to the quick releases.
The Border Patrol had 28,717 people in custody as of May 10, the day before pandemic-related asylum restrictions expired, which was double from two weeks earlier, according to a court indictment. By Sunday, the number was down 23 percent to 22,259, still unusually high.
The Border Patrol operates a network of stations and processing facilities along the southwestern border where it detains and processes migrants encountered by agents before they are released into the US or handed over to immigration and customs enforcement. On its website, the agency says it has a maximum capacity of 5,000, though the agency has been rapidly expanding capacity in recent months.
The average time in custody on Sunday was 77 hours, five hours more than the maximum allowed under the agencies’ policies.
During the Trump administration, the deaths of children in US custody became hotbeds of controversy, calling into question the administration’s efforts to protect the most vulnerable arrivals.
At least six children died over a roughly one-year period from 2018 to 2019; they were held in Border Patrol or Health and Human Services custody.