Yazmin Juárez said she knew the journey north could be dangerous, “but I was more afraid of what might happen to us if we stayed.” Clutching her nearly two-year-old toddler Mariee, Yazmin left Guatemala for the U.S. early last year, hoping “to build a better, safer life for us. That did not happen.”
In Wednesday testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the asylum-seeker described how Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials consistently failed to provide proper medical treatment for Mariee after she became sick in custody at the South Texas Family Residential Center, a migrant family jail in Dilley.
“I noticed immediately how many sick kids there were—and no effort was made to separate the sick from the healthy,” she said. Mariee was cleared as healthy when they arrived but then became sick too, and after two visits to the clinic, only became worse. “I tried to come back—multiple times,” she said. “I’d wait in line early in the morning when the clinic opened with dozens of other mothers with their sick children. Twice I was turned away and told to come back another day.”
Yazmin said that by the time she got a third clinic visit, the toddler had lost two pounds from vomiting. “She was still running a fever nearly a week later, when I brought her back to the clinic and she was finally seen by an actual doctor,” who prescribed “Pedialyte, ibuprofen, Zyrtec and Vicks VapoRub. I didn’t learn until after she died that you aren’t supposed to give Vicks Vapo Rub to kids under 2-years-old because it could cause respiratory problems.”
Mariee continued to deteriorate. “Her body was limp and hot—I was watching her get more and more sick and was becoming more desperate by the day to find something to make her better.” She said she was then given an appointment with a doctor. “But that appointment never happened.”
Instead, ICE moved them to a gym to be processed for release, where they waited for hours. They were then taken to an airport to be flown to New Jersey, where Yazmin’s mom lives. “Mariee never got her appointment,” and she “never was seen by any medical staff.” In fact, Yazmin later found out that “her medical records from Dilley said she had no medical restrictions and was ‘medically cleared.’”
In New Jersey, Yazmin and her mom took her to the ER, and then she was transferred to the ICU. “She was attached to so many wires that I couldn’t even hold her to comfort her when she cried,” she said. But “all the hard work of doctors at two different hospitals came too late. My Mariee died on May 10, 2018. When I walked out of the hospital that day, all I had with me was a piece of paper with Mariee’s handprints in pink paint. The nurses made it for me the day before, as a Mother’s Day gift.”
Since Mariee’s death, Yazmin has filed a $60 million wrongful death claim against the federal government, and said she wanted to testify to Congress because “it didn’t have to be like this … small children do not belong in detention.” Following her powerful testimony, she was embraced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
Her testimony came as attorneys and medical professionals have condemned this intentional cruelty on the part of federal immigration officials, who have done everything from denying children showers to taking away sleeping mats and forcing them to sleep on concrete for complaining about their conditions. This cruelty must be stopped, or more children will die.
“I’m here today because I don’t want another little angel to suffer like my Mariee,” she said. “I don’t want other mothers and fathers to lose their children. It can’t be that hard in this great country to make sure that the little children you lock up don’t die from abuse and neglect.”
