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Nick Miroff and Robert Moore wrote a 12/13/18@9:55 PM WaPo article called: "7-year-old migrant girl taken into Border Patrol custody dies of dehydration, exhaustion". The article states with "A 7-year-old girl from Guatemala died of dehydration and shock after she was taken into Border Patrol custody last week for crossing from Mexico into the United States illegally with her father and a large group of migrants along a remote span of New Mexico desert, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Thursday."
I wrote in the article comments section that
Thoughts?
There isn't enough information provided to determine fault. How long was she in custody before she died? Was she ill was a medical evaluation done and was medical treatment provided? In addition onnce you assume custody you assume responsibility for keeping her alive. Was there willful neglect involved here is so someone could be held criminally liable. This might go to court and since she was taken from her parents and in custody if it is deemed that if more could have been done to keep her alive then someone will have to fork over money and possibly face charges if they failed to follow through and provide a sick child access to medical care.
There isn't enough information provided to determine fault. How long was she in custody before she died? Was she ill was a medical evaluation done and was medical treatment provided? In addition onnce you assume custody you assume responsibility for keeping her alive. Was there willful neglect involved here is so someone could be held criminally liable. This might go to court and since she was taken from her parents and in custody if it is deemed that if more could have been done to keep her alive then someone will have to fork over money and possibly face charges if they failed to follow through and provide a sick child access to medical care.
Border Patrol records show that she was in their custody for 8 hours.
Medical records indicate she had nothing to drink for several days.
I feel so sorry for that little girl what a horrible way to die.
At this point, I don't think we can blame anyone. We don't have all the facts. Yes, the parents were negligent taking such a young child though the desert, poorly prepared. But at this point, I don't know what their circumstances were and why that happened. Did they poorly prepare, why were they fleeing something that made the risk seem less horrible, or was there a series of events that lead to this... the article doesn't say anyone else in the group had not eaten or drank in days. Why just this little girl? Was she denied food and water or was she too sick to eat and drink?
And at this point, we don't know what happened at Boarder Patrol either. Was she offered water then? Maybe the group was and she didn't get any? Maybe the agents didn't even know she was sick they aren't doctors and nothing in the article says anyone told them. They found her seizing and airlifted her to a hospital. Maybe they knew too late.
I know they are doing a autopsy now. I think it's best to wait and see and get all the facts first, before jumping to conclusions on who is at fault and why. There could be negligence on the part of the family or Boarder Patrol. Or it could be just a tragic series of events that a reasonable person would not expect (like if she suddenly became ill).
It was the parent's responsibility to provide food and water....obviously they did not. They also made the extremely poor situation to bring the child on the trip.
From Honduras? The parents & family likely could have survived just fine in Honduras, where they knew the environment & plants & animals - which has no deserts, TMK. & if the parents decided to leave Honduras, they couldn't really leave their little girl behind.
The desert is an unforgiving environment - if you don't have enough water or food or clothing appropriate for extremes of heat & cold, you'll die of exposure. It happens even to tourists on US national monument grounds in the Southwest - much less to people new to the desert & unprepared.
Yep, the article above says there will be an autopsy - standard for unknown cause of death. Did the parents & child speak Spanish? It's possible that they don't - if they're from Honduras, they may speak one of the Native People's languages, & the child came down with symptoms after they were detained @ 10:00pm. (& they were detained south of Lordsburg, NM - about 75 miles north of the US/Mexico border. If the family was detained @ or near the border, they were transported over marginal or non-existent roads for 25 miles or so - adding to travel time.)
If there were no interpreter nor medical staff on site @ that point - How do we apportion blame? & the article referred to above notes the girl suffered seizure & high fever. The sequence is possibly wrong, I would have expected high fever & then seizure.
In any event, BP needs to staff up on medical responders - especially for detentions after hours - a joke, because in detaining people, there are no set hours. Translation services are also needed - BP can sign up for telephone interpretation after office hours, just like anybody else who has to serve a very diverse population. Or they can live with the very bad optics of having people die while in custody - not a pretty picture, & BP isn't the ultimate cause of the problem. But still, we have the resources, & the would-be asylees wouldn't be here @ all if they had the resources to stay put in their own country,
Condolences to the parents & family, & to the BP officers & staff - I'm sure they did everything they could, once they realized there was a medical emergency taking place before their eyes.
So the Border Patrol should have to learn every remote language to accommodate illegal aliens? If the parents did speak some remote language (which is doubtful) then they shouldn't have put their child in danger knowing that it would be unlikely that anyone could communicate with them in their language in case of an emergency. I'd be willing to bet that the parents spoke Spanish and we have plenty of Border Patrol that speak Spanish. IMO, the damage was already done to the child because of her parent's negligence and she couldn't be saved but anything to demonize the enforcement of our immigration laws and put the blame on them rather than the parents, right?
Nick Miroff and Robert Moore wrote a 12/13/18@9:55 PM WaPo article called: "7-year-old migrant girl taken into Border Patrol custody dies of dehydration, exhaustion". The article states with "A 7-year-old girl from Guatemala died of dehydration and shock after she was taken into Border Patrol custody last week for crossing from Mexico into the United States illegally with her father and a large group of migrants along a remote span of New Mexico desert, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Thursday."
I wrote in the article comments section that
Thoughts?
How is this Border Patrol’s fault at all? Give me a break! No one should be trekking across the desert with their 7-year old in the company of cartel members. This is all on the parent. Border Patrol is the one who took the child to the hospital. They didn’t cause the conditions she came to them with.
I've told you guys not to let WaPo tell you how to think. But you keep doing it over & over.
It's sad a family would do that to their kid.
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Mother nature is a tough old gal
