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Shocking Video Shows How Border Patrol Let Teenage Asylum Seeker Die in Custody

HeadlineDec 06, 2019

A shocking video obtained by ProPublica shows the last hours of the life of 16-year-old indigenous Guatemalan asylum seeker Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez. He was found dead by his cellmate in a Texas Border Patrol holding cell in May. The footage is disturbing. Hernández Vásquez had been diagnosed with the flu and a fever of 103 when he was put in the holding cell with another sick boy. A nurse recommended he be sent to the emergency room if his conditions worsened. Instead, Border Patrol left him in a cold, cement, quarantined cell, where he was found dead the following morning in a pool of blood next to a toilet. An agent checked on Hernández Vásquez three times while the boy was dying. But ProPublica reports the Customs and Border Protection agent failed to perform adequate checks on the boy and never reported anything alarming with the boy’s health status. The video also shows that CBP lied about how the boy’s body was found.

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