Migrant Baby Contracted Pneumonia After Five Days in a 'Freezing' Holding Cell
By Adam K. Raymond DEC. 20, 2018
When A. Portillo, a 23-year-old woman from Honduras, was taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in California earlier this month, her five-month-old was sick. The woman, who spoke to BuzzFeed News and asked to be identified by only her first initial and last name, was giving her baby an antibiotic but said she wasn’t allowed to keep the medication after she was detained.
Her baby got sicker as they were held in “freezing” cells — migrants refer to these as hieleras, or iceboxes — and when she pleaded with CBP agents for a doctor, she says they refused. “The agents told me I wasn’t in a position to be asking for anything and that they didn’t tell me to come to the United States,” she said. They also called her an “invader,” she told NBC News.
After being transferred to San Diego and then flying to North Carolina to be with family, Portillo was finally able to get her child to a hospital. The baby had a fever and at one point stopped breathing. Doctors said she had pneumonia. “If I had been able to keep the drugs, maybe they would have made my baby better,” she said.
This CBP horror story follows two others that came to light in the past week. Last Thursday, the Washington Post reported the death of Jakelin Caal. The seven-year-old Guatemalan girl died of a combination of septic shock, fever, and dehydration, just hours after she was taken into CBP custody. On Tuesday, members of Congress touring the facility where Caal was held before she died were told of another young girl who fell dangerously ill while in CBP custody. The girl, whose mother told officials her daughter had a preexisting medical condition, went into cardiac arrest but eventually made a full recovery.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/migrant-baby-got-pneumonia-after-days-in-freezing-cell.html
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