An 8-year-old girl whose family immigrated illegally to America from Panama passed away while in U.S. Border Patrol custody, making her the second child to die in an overcrowded detention facility in two weeks.
As waves of illegal immigrants have continued to pour across the U.S. southern border daily, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents deal with facilities running significantly over max-capacity and long hours.
8-year-old Anadith Tanay Reyes Alvarez was born with a heart condition, while being held in Harlingen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the hotbeds for migrant crossings, she experienced a medical emergency. U.S. officials quickly called medical services to transport her to a nearby hospital where the she was pronounced dead.
A CBP statement said that the Office of Professional Responsibility had launched an investigation into Alarez’s death, and an autopsy has been ordered to determine the exact cause of her untimely death.
Alvarez is the second minor to die in U.S. custody in recent weeks. A 17-year-old Honduran boy, Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza Health, crossed the border alone, and was referred to a Human Services Department holding center that assisted unaccompanied minors, he died while in custody. The Associated Press (AP) interviewed the boys mother, who told the outlet, “He had epilepsy, but it wasn’t an illness that threatened him, because he had had it since he was eight. The longest a seizure would last was less than a minute. It seemed like it only hit him a little.”
According to the AP’s report, the cause of death is still unknown as the boy’s family awaits autopsy results.
Thousands of immigrants have died while making the journey into the U.S., and even more so in recent years. The rugged terrain, violent cartels, drug traffickers, extreme heat, and the strong current from the Rio Grande river have all played a role in making the expedition dangerous and deadly.
Days before the While House lifted Title 42 last week, which was a COVID-19 pandemic-era policy enacted to turn away more than 2 million migrants from entering America to prevent the spread of the virus, thousands of migrants flooded the border in anticipation of more relaxed immigration policy.
Border states, overrun and drained of resources began bussing hundreds of migrants to sanctuary cities such as Chicago, New York, and Washington D.C. These cities have constructed temporary shelters to house the massive influx of people entering their communities, including using schools and hotels as temporary homes. The Mayor of New York City recently announced that nearly half of the hotels in the city were occupied by migrants sent to border states. The city has even displaced homeless military veterans in order to take in the number of migrants surging to the streets.
The crisis on the southern border has drastically affected the entire country, which is now having to prepare to care for their communities and the millions of people who have come to America in the past few years.
