Another Migrant Child Dies in Custody and Trump Wants Funding to Expand Detention Camps

[Content Note: Nativism; death; child abuse.]

Following the deaths of 7-year-old Jakelin Caal and 8-year-old Felipe Alonzo-Gomez in December while in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a third child has now died while in CBP custody.

And officials' story about the fate of the 16-year-old boy, whose name they have not yet released, sounds very familiar:

[O]n April 20, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials brought the boy to an ORR shelter.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection clinicians did not notice any health concerns and the boy himself did not mention any when brought to the shelter, said Evelyn Stauffer, a Health and Human Services spokesperson. The next morning, however, the boy became "noticeably ill," including having a fever, chills, and a headache, she added.

Workers at the shelter brought the boy to a hospital that morning on April 21, where he was treated and released that day and brought back to the shelter, Stauffer said.

"The minor's health did not improve after being transferred back to the shelter so on the morning of April 22, 2019, the minor was taken to another hospital emergency department via ambulance," she said. "Later that day, the minor was transferred to a children's hospital in Texas and was treated for several days in the hospital's intensive care unit. Following several days of intensive care, the minor passed away at the hospital on April 30, 2019."

The cause of death has yet to be determined as the ORR investigates the case.

In every case of a child dying in custody, there is a health check in which the child is given minimal treatment and released, only to die within days.

And I want to stress that this is the third child that we know of. I desperately hope there are not more dead children whose lives ended while in U.S. custody, and I fear that there are. Unfortunately, we have no reason to trust CBP and every reason not to trust their official stories, which curiously change upon scrutiny.

Meanwhile, as eyes were focused on the Barr hearing yesterday, Donald Trump requested $4.5 billion in emergency border aid from Congress, including "$1.1 billion for border operations like detention beds. The administration's request includes money for an additional 23,600 beds."

Twenty-three thousand more beds. Under the auspices of "humanitarian aid."

Trump has created a humanitarian crisis at the border and now he wants to build concentration camps to "fix" it.

I can't even find the words to describe how incandescently angry, how grief-stricken, how full of white-hot blinding rage I am. This is wrong. This is indecent. This is cruel.

Donald Trump must be removed from office. Urgently. Children are dying because of his relentless malice.