IRTF News

the lifeless body of Jakelin Caal Maquín, 7, who died in the custody of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, was returned to her family home in Guatemala. Then on Christmas Day, the Border Patrol announced another Guatemalan child, 8-year-old Felipe Gómez Alonso, had died in the agency’s custody.

Roxsana Hernández Rodriguez had “deep bruises” on her body and died of dehydration, an independent autopsy found.

In December some of the IRTF staff traveled to El Paso, TX, to take part in “Christmas in Tornillo” at the detention camp where the US government is imprisoning upwards of 2,700 Central American teenagers in questionable conditions. Participants of the 10-day rally sang carols to the kids inside the barbed wire fence and chanted “No están solos” (“You are not alone”). The demonstrators’ nonviolent direct action culminated on New Year’s Eve when they held banners and blocked an entrance to the detention facility, also blocking the road to the US-Mexico border crossing.

The circumstances of Jakelin Caal Maquin’s death are being seized upon as evidence both for and against the Trump administration’s hardline approach to immigration