Again, child arrested for immigrating dies in the USA

This 19 December 2018 video from the USA says about itself:

Greg Grandin: How U.S. Policies Punished Central Americans, Long Before Jakelin Caal Maquín’s Death

As public outrage grows over the death of Jakelin Caal Maquín, a 7-year-old indigenous Guatemalan girl who died in Border Patrol custody, we discuss U.S. policy in Central America with Greg Grandin, prize-winning author and professor of Latin American history at New York University.

Searching for answers after Jakelin’s death, Grandin points to border militarization policies dating back to the Clinton administration and the closure of safer urban routes to the U.S. border. He also links the displacement of Jakelin’s family to the U.S.-backed coup in Guatemala in 1954 and economic policies that destroyed subsistence agriculture in her region. Grandin’s latest piece in The Nation, co-authored with Elizabeth Oglesby, is titled “Who Killed Jakelin Caal Maquín at the US Border?”

From Common Dreams in the USA, 25 December 2018:

An eight-year-old Guatemalan boy died in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shortly after midnight on Christmas Day, the second death of a migrant child detained by the agency this month alone.

From CNN, 26 December 2018:

Rep. Joaquin Castro, chairman-elect of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, identified the child in a statement as Felipe Alonzo-Gomez.

The boy, who was detained with his father, died shortly before midnight at Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center in Alamogordo, New Mexico, about 90 miles north of the border crossing in El Paso, Texas.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV, 25 December 2018:

In the United States, another child from Guatemala, detained by the US border police, has died. He is a boy, 8 years of age. Earlier this month, a girl from Guatemala died in a US American detention center. …

It has not been announced how long the two were in the US and how long they had already been detained in a detention center. In a statement, the border patrol has said they will publish more information “as soon as it is available and appropriate”. …

Second case

More than a week ago, a scandal arose about the death of a 7-year-old girl from Guatemala. She was with her father in a group of migrants who had illegally crossed the border between the US and Mexico.

The group was arrested shortly after crossing the border. A few hours later the girl became ill. She had to vomit, had a high fever and had difficulty breathing. She died in a hospital. Her funeral was in Guatemala today.

According to the border police officers they did everything to help the girl, but she had not eaten or drunk anything for days. The father said through a lawyer that that is not true and that the girl had eaten and drunk. Civil rights lawyers and activists were also critical: they thought that the conditions in the jails were bad.

This 24 December 2018 Spanish language video is about the arrival of the coffin of 7-year-old Jaklin in Guatemala.

A funeral was held for Jakelin Caal, the 7-year-old Guatemalan migrant girl who died in U.S. custody earlier this month. Her mother was so crushed, she could not bear to attend the Christmas Day funeral. https://t.co/v2MgZkpHFG pic.twitter.com/tRp2sH5IeG

— CBS News (@CBSNews) December 26, 2018

Denouncing 7-Year-Old’s Death, UN Rights Expert Demands US Halt Child Detentions. “As repeatedly stated by a series of U.N. human rights bodies, detention of children based on their migratory status is a violation of international law.” By Andrea Germanos.

‘Reckless Disregard for Very Vulnerable People’: Just Before Christmas, ICE Quietly Drops Hundreds of Migrants at Bus Stop With Nowhere to Go: here.