BFF-22 Migrant files claim over daughter’s death after US detention

303

ZCZC

BFF-22

US-MIGRATION-JUSTICE

Migrant files claim over daughter’s death after US detention

MIAMI, Aug 29, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A Guatemalan asylum seeker has filed a
claim against US authorities for the “wrongful death” of her daughter, who
died six weeks after their detention by US immigration police, her attorneys
said Tuesday.

Yazmin Juarez, 20, and her 19-month-old daughter Mariee were apprehended
when they crossed the Rio Grande River in March 2018 from Mexico and held at
a detention facility in Dilley, Texas.

“Those responsible for providing safe, sanitary conditions and proper
medical care failed this little girl, and it caused her to die a painful
death,” attorney R. Stanton Jones of the law firm Arnold and Porter said in a
statement.

“Mariee Juarez entered Dilley a healthy baby girl and 20 days later was
discharged a gravely ill child with a life-threatening respiratory
infection,” he said.

After her release, the girl was transferred to two different hospitals and
died on May 10, 2018. Arnold and Porter sent a notice of claim — a step
prior to a lawsuit — on behalf of Juarez to Eloy, Arizona, an intermediary
between the federal government and the private firm that operates the
detention facility in Dilley.

BSS/AFP/MSY/1001 hrs