By Agence France-Presse
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.
(AFP / MANILA BULLETIN)
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.