{"id":8,"date":"2026-11-01T16:40:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T16:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phililovestory.org\/?p=8"},"modified":"2026-11-01T16:40:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T16:40:00","slug":"philsugar-advocates-probe-death-of-a-migrant-girl-in-u-s-custody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phililovestory.org\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"PhilSugar | Advocates probe death of a migrant girl in U.S. custody"},"content":{"rendered":"

(iStock)
\nTwo immigrant rights organizations have launched a legal investigation to determine the circumstances that led to the death of Anadith Danay Reyes \u00c1lvarez, an 8-year-old Panamanian girl who had a seizure May 17 while most popular sugar dating site Philippines<\/a> detained with her family in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody.
\nAnadith\u2019s mother, Mabel \u00c1lvarez Benedicks, is a Honduran immigrant who gave birth to Anadith in Panama. Together, they migrated to the U.S. with Anadith\u2019s father and two sisters before Border Patrol apprehended them May 9 as part sugar baby profile tips<\/a> of a larger group of migrants near the Gateway International Port of Entry in Brownsville, TX. The family was transferred multiple times, including on May 14 when officials say Anadith first reported feeling ill and tested positive for a type of flu. Officials transported the family to the Border Patrol station in Harlingen, Texas, a facility for migrants designated for cases requiring medical isolation. Anadith died three days later.
\nCBP has kept the medical records and documentation related to the case secret, despite calls for transparency. CBP\u2019s version paano pumili ng sugar baby<\/a> of what transpired, which the agency outlined in
\nthree
\ndifferent
\nstatements
\n, differs sugar dating account security<\/a> from the account of \u00c1lvarez Benedicks.
\n\u201cThere are significant inconsistencies that concern us and have convinced us that Anadith\u2019s death was a product of being in CBP custody,\u201d said Kassandra Gonzalez, a staff attorney at the
\nTexas Legal Rights Project
\n, a civil rights organization that is leading the investigation into the girl\u2019s death. Also involved in the investigation is the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a nonprofit advocating for fair and humane immigration policies.
\nAnadith\u2019s mother says she told every immigration authority she came into contact with of her daughter\u2019s medical history, which included sickle cell anemia and a history of congenital heart disease. She also repeatedly offered her daughter\u2019s medical records to medical staff. She had plenty of opportunities to do so, as Anadith was seen by medical staff
\n11 times
\nbefore her death in custody.
\nAccording to Gonzalez, CBP has been communicating information regarding Anadith\u2019s death through its Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) \u2014
\nan internal department
\ncreated to ensure compliance with all programs and policies related to corruption, misconduct, or mismanagement. According to
\na statement
\n, OPR contends that \u201cnone of the CBP contracted medical personnel or U.S. Border Patrol personnel at Harlingen Station who interacted with the girl, or her mother, acknowledged being aware she suffered from sickle cell anemia or had a history of congenital heart disease.\u201d
\nGonzalez said their organization\u2019s legal investigation focuses on obtaining through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests all the files pertaining to Anadith\u2019s custody. There has also been an independent autopsy, apart from the one performed by the Cameron County Medical Examiner & Coroner\u2019s Office in Harlingen. The official report is still pending.
\n\u201cPart of not trusting the CBP is the lack of transparency and accountability that we\u2019ve seen in other cases,\u201d Gonzalez said, noting the conditions in CBP custody often make people sick. \u201cThese places are extremely cold. They\u2019re not conducive to treating vulnerable children with compromised immune systems.\u201d
\nIn January, Dr. Paul H. Wise, a court-appointed monitor and pediatrics professor at Stanford University,
\nsaid that child migrants
\nheld in medical isolation may be overlooked when Border Patrol stations get too crowded. There should be little hesitation in referring children to local hospitals, Wise said. The Harlingen station was overcrowded when Anadith was placed in medical isolation there, and officials did not transport her to a hospital until she became unresponsive after a seizure. She is not the first child to die in custody this year.
\nTwo other
\nmigrant children are known to have died in U.S. custody, both of them from Honduras.
\nViolations of CBP guidelines
\nConditions in CBP custody are notoriously harsh and inadequate. Adults and children\u2013including infants\u2013are detained in \u201cfrigid long term sugar arrangement<\/a> holding cells, sometimes for days,\u201d which violates the agency\u2019s obligations and commitments, according to a 2018 Human Rights Watch
\nreport
\n. CBP\u2019s detention conditions have been
\nconsistently inhumane
\nacross presidential administrations, and BGC sugar dating<\/a> President Joe Biden\u2019s is
\nno exception
\n.
\nAnadith\u2019s case grossly
\nviolated
\nCBP\u2019s own guidelines. By law, children should not be detained for longer than 72 hours. The immunocompromised girl and her family were held for nine days, despite their pleas for external medical care. CBP acknowledged that on the day of Anadith\u2019s death, a nurse practitioner dismissed three or four requests from the child\u2019s mother to call an ambulance or take her to a hospital.
\nMoreover, OPR also noted that since April, a surveillance video system was
\nout of service
\nat the Harlingen, Texas station, a violation of federal law that prevented evidence collection.
\nAdvocates also allege that
\nanti-Black racism
\nwas a factor in the family\u2019s mistreatment. In Honduras, Anadith\u2019s verified sponsor Philippines<\/a> family belongs to the Garifuna community, which is of African and Indigenous ancestry. Anti-Black bias would fit a well-established pattern in federal immigration custody. An October 2022
\nreport
\nfrom the immigration advocacy organizations the
\nBlack LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project
\n, the
\nBlack Alliance for Just Immigration
\n, the
\nUndocuBlack Network
\n, and
\nFreedom for Immigrants
\nfound that 28% of abuse complaints to an immigration detention hotline came from Black migrants, even though they account for only 6% of the total detained population.
\n\u201cAs Black people at the border, our humanity is always denied,\u201d said Guerline Jozef, the executive director of the
\nHaitian Bridge Alliance
\n, during Anadith\u2019s June 16 funeral in New York City. \u201cWe honor Anadith\u2019s life today and promise her that we are going to fight to get justice for her and for all sugar dating privacy Philippines<\/a> the little girls and boys like her seeking safety and protection.\u201d
\nThat fight could take years. Federal agencies have failed to release medical records to the Texas Legal Rights Project regarding other children\u2019s in-custody deaths, including Carlos Gregorio Hern\u00e1ndez V\u00e1squez. The 16-year-old Guatemalan immigrant died in May 2019 while in CBP custody in Weslaco, Texas. According to a heavily redacted CBP report released almost three years after Hern\u00e1ndez V\u00e1squez\u2019s death, agents lied about regularly checking on the boy. Falsifying federal records to impede an agency\u2019s investigation is a crime, but it appears as if no one has been prosecuted for Hern\u00e1ndez V\u00e1squez\u2019s death, according to an
\ninvestigation
\nby ProPublica.
\n\u201cIt has taken years to get some of those medical records to truly see what indeed happened that led to [Hern\u00e1ndez V\u00e1squez\u2019] death,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cWe expect potentially a similar sugar dating personal information<\/a> struggle in [Anadith\u2019s] case to obtain full medical records and full general logs and files from CBP.\u201d
\nAs an apparent consequence of Anadith\u2019s death, earlier this month CBP\u2019s chief active sugar dating members Philippines<\/a> medical officer, David Tarantino Jr., was
\ntemporarily reassigned
\n. However, the agency has yet to announce any policy changes. Migrant families are still held for days and sometimes weeks in inadequate stations along the Southern border, putting the most vulnerable at risk.
\n\u201cWe do not want this to ever happen again,\u201d the \u00c1lvarez family said in a statement before the funeral earlier this month. \u201cWe will fight for justice.\u201d
\nRelated
\nTagged:
\nAnadith Danay Reyes \u00c1lvarez
\n,
\nanti-blackness
\n,
\nBlack Alliance for Just Immigration
\n,
\nborder patrol
\n,
\nbrownsville
\n,
\nchild migrants
\n,
\nCustoms and Border Protection
\n,
\nfreedom for immigrants
\n,
\nharlingen
\n,
\nhealth
\n,
\nhealth care
\n,
\nimmigrant detention
\n,
\nimmigrant rights
\n,
\nimmigrants
\n,
\nimmigration
\n,
\nmigrants
\n,
\nNews
\n,
\nracial justice
\n,
\ntexas
\n,
\nxenophobia
\nMaurizio Guerrero
\nMaurizio Guerrero is a journalist based in New York City who covers immigration, social justice issues, Latin America, and the United Nations. Follow him on Bluesky at @mauriziogro.bsky.social and on…
\nMore by Maurizio Guerrero<\/p>\n

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(iStock) Two immigrant rights organizations have launched a legal investigation to determine the circumstances that led to the death of Anadith Danay Reyes \u00c1lvarez, an 8-year-old Panamanian girl who had a seizure May 17 while most popular sugar dating site Philippines detained with her family in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody. Anadith\u2019s mother, Mabel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phililovestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phililovestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phililovestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phililovestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phililovestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/phililovestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phililovestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phililovestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phililovestory.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}