Guatemalan girl (7) dies while being held by US border police

A seven-year-old girl from Guatemala has died of exhaustion and dehydration, while the American border police held her in custody. The girl was with her father, part of a group of 163 migrants who had illegally crossed the border between Mexico and the United States. And volunteered to the US border police.

According to the Washington Post, the girl had been in a detention centre at the border police in Lordsburg, New Mexico state, for eight hours when she was convulsed. Her body temperature was more than forty degrees. She was transferred to a hospital in El Paso, where she died.

“Not eaten or drunk for several days”

Normally, migrants are medically examined at the reception centres and receive food and water. Whether that has happened now is not known. The newspaper cites a statement from the US Customs and Border Protection that according to witnesses the girl had not eaten or drunk anything for several days.

Civil rights organizations have a lot of criticism of the conditions in the reception centres. In recent months, the centres have been inundated by families with children seeking asylum in the United States.

Border wall

US President Trump has a hard line against migration and still wants to build a border wall between the US and Mexico, one of his election promises.

Last summer he felt a ‘zero tolerance policy’ through which children at the border of their parents were separated, which led to much fuss at home and abroad, after which the policy was partly reversed.