The 8-Year-Old Boy Who Died In Border Patrol Custody Was Healthy When He Left Mexico, Shelter Says [View all]
Source: BuzzFeed News
Felipe Gomez Alonzo was sick with the flu when he died on Christmas Eve, after spending a week in Customs and Border Protection custody.
John Stanton
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Ciudad Juárez, México
Posted on January 9, 2019, at 11:11 p.m. ET
A Dec. 12, 2018, photo of Felipe Gomez Alonzo, 8, in Yalambojoch, Guatemala.
JUAREZ, Mexico — An 8-year-old Guatemalan boy who died last month in Customs and Border Protection custody wasn’t sick when he and his father left an immigrant shelter here shortly before being detained by CBP agents outside of El Paso, Texas, a shelter official told BuzzFeed News Wednesday.
Felipe Alonzo Gomez died in December while sick with influenza, after being held in CBP custody for a week. President Donald Trump has sought to blame the child’s death on his father, claiming in a tweet that Felipe was “very sick before they were given over to Border Patrol.”
But according to Blanca Alicia Rivera, who manages the Casa del Migrante shelter in Juarez, Gomez wasn’t sick when he and his father decided to cross the border between checkpoints on Dec. 18.
“Felipe was here. He was in perfect health condition,” Rivera said, adding that not only does the shelter have doctors on call to screen immigrants who come to the shelter, “we won’t let them leave if they’re sick.”
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