President Donald Trump’s administration has the blood of a 7-year-old girl on its hands after the girl who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with her father last week died after being taken into the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol.
The 7-year old girl is believed to have died of dehydration and shock more than eight hours after she was arrested by agents near Lordsburg, New Mexico. The girl was from Guatemala and was travelling with a group of 163 people who approached agents to turn themselves in on Dec. 6.
Early Dec. 7, the girl started having seizures, and emergency respondents measured her body temperature at 105.7 degrees. She was taken to a hospital in El Paso where she died.
It’s unknown what happened to the girl during the eight hours before she started having seizures and was flown to the hospital. Neither the names of the girl nor her father were released. The agency, which typically provides food and water to migrants in its custody, is investigating the incident to ensure appropriate policies were followed.
The girl’s death raises questions about whether border agents knew she was ill and whether she was fed anything or given anything to drink during the eight-plus hours she was in custody. In a statement, Customs and Border Protection said the girl had not eaten or consumed water in several days.
Processing 163 immigrants in one night could have posed challenges for the agency, whose detention facilities are meant to be temporary and don’t usually fit that many people.
When a Border Patrol agent arrests someone, that person is processed at a facility but usually spends no more than 72 hours in custody before they are either transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement or, if they’re Mexican they are quickly deported home.
Immigrants, attorneys and activists have long raised issues with the conditions of Border Patrol holding cells. In Tucson, an ongoing lawsuit claims holding cells are filthy, extremely cold and lacking basic necessities such as blankets. A judge overseeing that lawsuit has ordered the agency’s Tucson Sector, which patrols much of the Arizona-Mexico border, to provide blankets and mats to sleep on and to continually turn over surveillance footage from inside the cells.
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