A 42-year-old Nicaraguan migrant who was in the custody of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) died this week in a Louisiana hospital. According to information from the authorities, the immigrant had been detained since he arrived in the country, last April 2020.
The victim was identified as Ernesto Rocha-Cuadra, 42, while in the custody of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service after being detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents after entering to the United States on April 17 of last year near Andrade, California.
Rocha-Cuadra died at La Salle General Hospital, in the city of Jena, Louisiana, where he was transferred to a detention center in New Orleans, nine days after his arrival in the United States. Doctors reported the preliminary cause of death as cardiac arrest.
Rocha-Cuadrada’s death follows the case of Anadith Tanay Reyes Álvarez, an 8-year-old girl who died of influenza in May, after the medical team at the detention center ignored her parents’ requests to be taken to a hospital due to the deterioration of the minor.
Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez’s mother had made multiple requests for an ambulance or hospital medical care for her daughter, although the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) service denied the requests.
According to the girl’s family, the nurse saw her four times after the little girl complained of stomach pain, nausea and shortness of breath, then reported that the girl had a normal heart rhythm and normal blood oxygen saturation levels. . That same day she was denied three or four requests from the girl’s mother for her to call an ambulance to take her to the hospital.
The young woman had been in the custody of the Customs and Border Protection office in Brownsville, Texas for eight days. Incident records state Reyes was medically evaluated on May 10 and did not complain of any illness or injury at the time. Although later, on May 14, the little girl manifested abdominal odor, nasal congestion, and cough, for which she was transferred to a hospital where Influenza A was detected and she received several medications, including Tamiflu, Zofran, paracetamol, and Ibuprofen. .
According to her relatives, the girl would have migrated to the United States because she was requesting medical assistance, since she had health problems from an early age associated with her heart. In a recent interview with CNN, her aunt Nixa Álvarez Benedith stated that Anadith would have undergone open heart surgery at the age of four.
With information from EFE and CNN
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