ICE denies reports that child died in detention
Federal authorities on Wednesday disputed a claim that a migrant child had died in custody at a detention facility in Texas, and said they were investigating whether a child died after being released.
A Houston-based immigration lawyer made the allegation on social media.
Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in an email that no child had died at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, outside San Antonio.
“Reports that a child died in ICE custody at Dilley are false. No child or adult has ever died at an ICE family residential center,” the email read. “Please note that the person who originally tweeted that later posted an update that retracted the original accusation. The updated accusation leaves little to no info that allows us to research.”
ICE said it was looking into reports that a girl had died after being released but had no further information. The Times has not been able to independently verify a death.
Mana Yegani, in a sincedeleted tweet, wrote Tuesday night that there were reports of a child dying in ICE custody and that the whereabouts of the child’s parents were unknown.
But the lawyer later said that the child died after being released and that the death was a result of conditions at the facility.
Yegani wrote: “The child died following her stay at an ICE Detention Center, as a result of possible negligent care and a respiratory illness she contracted from one of the other children. The events took place in Dilley Family Detention Center in south Texas.”
The facility, the largest of ICE’s three family detention centers, can hold about 2,400 people. The private firm CCA manages it for ICE.
Katy Murdza, advocacy coordinator of the Dilley Pro Bono Project, an immigrant aid group, said in an email to The Times that the group didn’t have information on the cause of death or confirmation that it was connected to medical treatment at the facility.
“We have, however, seen ongoing inadequacies in the standard of care provided to immigrants in detention, and have filed complaints with the government raising these concerns,” she wrote. She said the group had filed complaints about conditions at the site.
Yegani’s tweets created a bit of a firestorm on social media and fueled the controversy over the Trump administration’s policy that separated children from families and guardians at the border in an attempt to stop illegal immigration.
Secretly recorded audio and video of youngsters crying for their parents amid the separations of more than 2,000 children led a judge to order the administration to end the practice and reunify the families. Immigration advocates say the separations have caused psychological trauma for the children, and watchdog groups decried the policy as inhumane.
But no deaths of children in ICE custody have been documented. Any such report would have undoubtedly sparked a new wave of public outcry over the detention policies.
Attempts to reach Yegani were unsuccessful. She tweeted that a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer was representing the child’s family.