WASHINGTON – Authorities confirmed today the death last September of a 10-year-old Salvadoran migrant girl while in a detention center, which is the sixth case of a minor who died in government custody in the past months
The spokesman of the Department of Health (DHS, in English), Mark Weber, confirmed the death of the girl, which occurred before the five deaths of migrant children who have registered.
In a statement, Weber said that the girl, who has not been identified, entered the center of the Refugee Relocation Office in March 2018 and that she had congenital heart problems.
After complications in an operation, the girl went into a coma and was later transferred to two hospitals in Arizona and Nebraska, where she died later in September 2018, the spokesperson added.
“A tragedy under our eyes: the news that a ten-year-old girl from El Salvador died in the custody of US immigration is simply outrageous (…) Congress should investigate this ominous pattern of deaths immediately,” he said. Jess Morales, president of the migrant advocacy group Families Belong Together, in a statement.
Last Monday, the authorities reported the death of Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vázquez, aged 16, at the Weslaco Border Patrol Station in Texas, six days after being taken to that detention center, without any information being received. cause.
And on May 14, a Guatemalan boy of two and a half years old died in the custody of the Border Patrol after being hospitalized and, apparently, developed pneumonia.
In recent months there has been an increase in the flow of immigrants, mostly families and unaccompanied minors from Central America, who arrive at the border with Mexico, and many of whom report to the authorities and apply for asylum.
The authorities arrested 98,977 undocumented migrants on the border with Mexico in April, the highest number in the last six months, and of which 8,897 were unaccompanied minors, according to data published in early May by CBP.
With these arrests, there have already been 460,294 arrests of migrants on the border since the beginning of this fiscal year 2019, which began last October.
In its Twitter account, the CBP stressed that during the 2019 fiscal year the total number of arrests at the border since 2009 has been exceeded. (EFEUSA)
