Pleas for medical care were ignored, says the mother.
The mother of an 8-year-old girl who died in Border Patrol custody said Friday that agents repeatedly ignored pleas to hospitalize her medically fragile daughter as she felt pain in her bones, struggled to breathe and was unable to walk.
The girl died Wednesday on what her mother said was the family's ninth day in Border Patrol custody. People are to be held no more than 72 hours under agency policy, a rule that is violated during unusually busy times. Alvarez Benedicks, 35, said she, her husband and three children, aged 14, 12 and 8, crossed the border to Brownsville, Texas, on May 9. After a doctor diagnosed the 8-year-old, Anadith Tanay Reyes Alvarez, with influenza, the family was sent to the Harlingen station on May 14. It was unclear why the family was held so long.Anadith woke up her first day in the Harlingen station with a fever and had a headache, according to her mother, who said the station was dusty and smelled of urine.
An ambulance was called later that day after Anadith went limp and unconscious and blood came out of her mouth, her mother said. She insists her daughter had no vital signs in the Border Patrol station before leaving for the hospital. Her death came a week after a 17-year-old Honduran boy, Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza, died in U.S. Health and Human Services Department custody. He was traveling alone.
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