8-year-old girl sought help 3 times on day she died in Border Patrol custody, officials say

‘She cried and begged for her life, and they ignored her,’ Anadith Tanay Reyes Alvarez’s mother said. An 8-year-old girl who died last week in Border Patrol custody was seen at least three separate times by medical personnel on the day of her death — complaining of vomiting, a stomachache and later suffering what appeared to be a seizure — before she was taken to a hospital, U.S. immigration officials said Sunday. The girl’s mother had previously told The Associated Press that agents had repeatedly ignored her pleas to hospitalize her medically fragile daughter, who had a history of heart problems and sickle cell anemia. Anadith Tanay Reyes Alvarez, whose parents are Honduran, was born in Panama with congenital heart disease. “She cried and begged for her life, and they ignored her. They didn’t do anything for her,” Mabel Alvarez Benedicks, the mother of Anadith, had previously told The Associated Press during an interview Friday. In a statement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it knew about the girl’s medical history when personnel began treating her for influenza four days before her death on May 17. (…) Anadith’s death has raised questions about whether the Border Patrol properly handled the situation. It was the second child migrant death in two weeks in U.S. government custody after a rush of illegal border crossings amid the expiration of pandemic-related asylum limits known as Title 42 severely strained holding facilities. According to a CBP statement, Anadith had first voiced complaints of abdominal pain, nasal congestion, and cough on the afternoon of May 14. She had a temperature of 101.8 degrees Fahrenheit (38.7 Celsius)

via abc7: 8-year-old girl sought help 3 times on day she died in Border Patrol custody, officials say