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8-Year-Old Guatemalan Migrant Dies in U.S. Custody

HeadlineDec 26, 2018

In New Mexico, an 8-year-old Guatemalan boy died on Christmas Eve while in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection—becoming the second migrant child to die in U.S. detention in the past month. Felipe Gómez Alonzo was admitted to a hospital earlier on Christmas Eve, diagnosed with a common cold, given ibuprofen and antibiotics, and released. But the boy continued to become more ill throughout the day. After he began vomiting, the boy was sent back to the same hospital but fell unconscious along the way; he was pronounced dead just before midnight Christmas morning. The cause of death is not yet known. The boy was first detained along with his father on December 18. The Trump administration said it was investigating the latest death and that it had ordered medical checks of every child in its custody. This follows the death of a 7-year-old indigenous Guatemalan girl, Jakelin Caal Maquín, who died on December 8—also in New Mexico—two days after she and her father presented themselves at the border in a bid for asylum. While he’s talked endlessly about the border wall, President Trump has neither tweeted about nor spoken about the dead children. The deaths have drawn international condemnation and calls for a thorough, independent investigation. Felipe González Morales, U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, said, “States have an obligation to care for migrants who arrive at the border, they cannot treat them as animals in inhuman conditions. … Detention of children based on their migratory status is a violation of international law.”

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