Sen. Elizabeth Warren took aim Tuesday at the “appalling” string of deaths of migrant children in U.S. custody and demanded to know what plans the Trump administration has to protect those detained at the southern border.
“I have been and continue to be extraordinarily concerned about this administration’s treatment of immigrant children,” the Massachusetts Democrat wrote.
Her questions came in a letter (pdf) to John P. Sanders, Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), dated Tuesday—one day after the death of a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy who was in government custody.
He was fifth migrant child to die since December after being detained.
That child, Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez, “had been held by immigration authorities for six days—twice as long as federal law generally permits—then transferred him to another holding facility even after he was diagnosed with the flu,” The Associated Press reported.
Warren, in her letter, noted that the teen’s death came less than a week after the death of a two-year-old who’d migrated with a parent and had been detained by border authorities. The toddler died after weeks spent in the hospital with pneumonia.
The heartbreaking list goes on: 16-year-old Juan de León Gutiérrez died on April 30. Two younger children died in December 2018—seven-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin and eight-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonzo.
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