DHS finds ‘no misconduct’ in two deaths
EL PASO — Yearlong investigations found “no misconduct or malfeasance” by U.S. immigration officials in the deaths of two Guatemalan children who were in U.S. Border Patrol custody last year, according to inspector general reports released Friday.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General released one-page reports in the deaths of Jakelin Caal Maquin, 7, and Felipe Gómez Alonzo, 8. The children are not identified by name in the reports, but the details match their descriptions and the circumstances of their deaths in December 2018.
Each report concluded that the
“investigation found no misconduct or malfeasance by DHS personnel.”
Officials have said they were the first children to die in Border Patrol custody in a decade. Three other Guatemalan children, ranging in age from 2 to 16, died after being taken into Border Patrol custody in April and May. DHS officials have not released results of internal investigations into those deaths.
Jakelin died Dec. 8, 2018, two days after she and her father entered the United States in a remote part of southwestern New Mexico and were taken into custody.
The day before her death, while traveling by bus to a Border Patrol facility 90 miles from where they crossed into the United States, Jakelin’s father reported that the girl was vomiting and had a fever, according to the government report. She also started having seizures.
When the bus arrived at the Border Patrol station in Lordsburg, N.M., Jakelin was taken by helicopter to a hospital in El Paso, the report said. Border Patrol agents drove her father to the hospital, about a three-hour drive from Lordsburg.
Jakelin died as a result of “sequelae of Streptococcal sepsis,” a massive infection, according to her autopsy.
Felipe entered the United States with his father on Dec. 18, 2018, in El Paso. They were moved to a Border Patrol facility in Alamogordo,
N.M., about 90 miles north of El Paso, five days later.
On Christmas Eve, a Border Patrol agent noticed the boy was ill “and interviewed the father, who requested medical treatment for his son,” according to the inspector general report.
He was taken to a hospital in Alamogordo, where “hospital staff diagnosed the child with an upper respiratory infection, prescribed amoxicillin and acetaminophen, and discharged the child,” the report said. He was taken back to a Border Patrol facility.
Felipe improved briefly but his condition soon worsened, the report said. He was taken back to the Alamogordo hospital, where he died shortly before midnight on Christmas Day.
According to the inspector general report, “the state medical examiner’s autopsy report found the child died from sepsis caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria,” often commonly referred to as a staph infection. The autopsy report from the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator listed the cause of death as “complications of influenza B infection with Staphylococcus aureus superinfection and sepsis.”