Seven-year-old Jakelin Ameí Rosmery Caal Maquin. Ten-year-old Darlyn Cristabel Cordova-Valle. Sixteen-year-old Juan de León Gutiérrez. Eight-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonzo. Sixteen-year-old Carlos Hernandez Vasquez. Two-year-old Wilmer Josué Ramírez Vásquez. Two-year-old Mariee Juárez. All seven of these children came to the U.S. in search of a better future, but all seven would eventually die here.
Darlyn left El Salvador to join her mom in the U.S., but once she got here, officials refused to reunite them, Families Belong Together chair Jess Morales Rocketto writes in a BuzzFeed News op-ed. In custody, the girl’s heart condition deteriorated, “Only as Darlyn lay in a coma, dying, was she transferred to a hospital close to her mother. She died three days later.”
The child’s September 2018 death was horrific, and the administration’s handling of it should have been a national scandal: “Officials hid Darlyn’s death from the public and Congress for nearly eight months,” Morales Rocketto continues, reporting it only after Carlos and Wilmer died in May after being taken into custody, and months after the December 2018 deaths of Jakelin and Felipe, who became the first kids to die in U.S. custody in nearly a decade. It raises another startling question: have there been other children we don’t know about?
It’s a fact that U.S. immigration detention policy has played a part in these deaths. Border Patrol facilities and holding cells in particular are cold, miserable places unfit for any human being, yet officials have kept babies and children caged there, oftentimes unlawfully. “It is illegal to hold a child for more than 72 hours in Border Patrol stations,” Rocketto continues, but “in reality, these children are being held for weeks or months.”
She cites attorney Hope Frye, who, when inspecting detention facilities, “came across a mother hunched over in a wheelchair holding a bundle. She was horrified when she got closer: The mother was clutching her premature baby, who was wrapped in a dirty cloth, and trying to keep her warm.” There is no doubt this baby could have died had she not intervened. “You look at this baby,” Frye said, “and there is no question that this baby should be in a tube with a heart monitor.”
“Inflicting this pain and suffering is cruel, and it is intentional,” Morales Rocketto continues. “These children are already alone and without their families, shivering in cages; the administration has gone as far as sending a government lawyer to court to argue that denying soap to children—while forcing them to sleep on concrete floors in freezing cells—is safe and sanitary.” The administration has also refused to give detained migrants their flu shots ahead of flu season, even though the flu “has already proven fatal to children” under U.S. watch, senators said in a letter to Trump officials.
There have been some attempts at justice for these families—Mariee’s mom has filed a $40 million lawsuit—but reforms are needed. “These stories serve as a warning to all of us,” Morales Rocketto says. “If Congress doesn’t step in to protect children’s rights against the constant attacks by the Trump administration, we will likely see more deaths. We need a system in place that ensures that kids in detention facilities are treated as children, not animals.” It’s too late for Jakelin, Darlyn, Juan, Felipe, Carlos, Wilmer, and Mariee. But doesn’t have to be too late for other children.
