Following the death of another child in the custody of the US Border Guard, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen wants to improve the care of young migrants at the border.
Children should be examined sooner and more intensively medically after their entry, said Nielsen on Wednesday (local time). She also asked the Ministry of Defense for medical support at the border. In addition, she had suggested in discussions with Mexico that migrants also get the necessary health care in the accommodations.
At the same time, Nielsen called on the US Congress to provide the necessary budgetary funds for border management and to improve border security in order to reduce the onslaught of migrants as a whole. The Minister announced that she would travel to the border later this week to get an idea of the medical care there.
At Christmas, a child from Guatemala had been killed in custody by the US border authorities. The eight-year-old died Tuesday night in a hospital in New Mexico after being brought there for signs of illness. The cause of death is still unclear. It was not until the beginning of December that a seven-year-old girl died of dehydration after being arrested by US border authorities.
Nielsen spoke of a „tragedy“. In recent months, the number of families and unaccompanied children crossing the US border illegally has increased dramatically. The number of people who were ill when they arrived in the USA also increased. That exacerbates the situation. The minister said that in the financial year 2018 – between the beginning of October 2017 and the end of September 2018 – six migrants died in US custody. „There were no children among them,“ she emphasized.
