Mother blames poor medical care at immigration detention facility for death of her toddler
When Yazmin Juarez crossed the Rio Grande with her 18-month-old daughter on March 1, she planned to join her mother in New Jersey, where she hoped her baby girl would grow up at a safe distance from the violence roiling their native Guatemala.
But Juarez, 20, and her daughter, Mariee, were stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. They were held for three weeks at an immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas, where Mariee fell ill.
By the time they were released, Mariee was coughing, vomiting and battling a high fever. Juarez rushed her daughter to a hospital in Edison a day after landing at Newark Liberty International Airport on March 25, but Mariee spent her final weeks fighting for her life before she suffered a fatal hemorrhage on May 10.
Now lawyers representing the family say they plan to sue multiple agencies associated with the immigrant detention center where Mariee started showing symptoms of an upper respiratory illness, alleging they provided inadequate care that led to Mariee's death.
On Tuesday afternoon, lawyers representing Yazmin Juarez filed a notice of intent to sue the city of Eloy, Arizona. In 2014, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement modified an existing contract with the city of Eloy, which is home to a federal immigration detention center, when it sought to build the facility in Dilley rather than negotiate a new contract with the private company that operates both centers. The lawyers are seeking an estimated $40 million in damages for the Juarez family.
"She wants Mariee's tragic death to bring about some good," said R. Stanton Jones, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who is representing Juarez pro bono. (Jones is identifying Juarez by her first name and a partial last name.) "That could certainly include fixing the wrongful conditions at Dilley, and it could also include taking a second look at detaining immigrant families."
The Eloy city clerk said Tuesday that she had received the notice and had sent it to the city's legal department. Attorneys for the city did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The notice alleges that the medical staff at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley failed "to ensure safe, sanitary, humane conditions" and that its "gross negligence caused Mariee to suffer extreme and extended physical, mental and emotional pain" leading to her death.
Five medical experts who reviewed the medical records and spoke with Vice News, which first reported Mariee's death, said they thought the immigrant detention center provided adequate medical care.
Lawyers representing Juarez, however, allege that Mariee was almost never treated by a doctor despite showing symptoms of a severe respiratory illness. Instead, they said, she was seen by nurses and physician's assistants, sometimes after waiting several hours in a crowded gymnasium full of sick children.
Dr. Benard Dreyer, the director of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at New York University's Langone Hospital, said Mariee should have been taken to a doctor while she was detained, when her symptoms persisted — not weeks later, after she and her mother were released.
"She should have had very different care for that time that she was in the detention center, and perhaps that would have saved her life," said Dreyer, who was hired by Juarez's lawyers.
Yazmin Juarez declined to comment Tuesday, referring questions to a public relations company working for the law firm.
Representatives for ICE and CoreCivic, the private company that operates the detention centers in Eloy and Dilley, declined to comment on Mariee Juarez's case.
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An ICE spokeswoman, Sarah Rodriguez, said in a statement that registered nurses, mental health providers, a physician and other medical professionals offer 24-hour emergency care at the Dilley facility.
"ICE is committed to ensuring the welfare of all those in the agency’s custody, including providing access to necessary and appropriate medical care," Rodriguez said in a statement. "Comprehensive medical care is provided to all individuals in ICE custody.”
The infant girl's death casts a spotlight on health conditions that immigrant families face in government detention centers, which civil rights groups say provide substandard medical care to children.
Family detention centers came under scrutiny earlier this year after the Trump administration announced a "zero-tolerance" approach to immigration enforcement under which it sought to criminally prosecute immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. More than 2,000 children were separated from their families, prompting an international outcry.
Thousands more were detained with their parents, as was the case with Juarez and Mariee, or as unaccompanied minors, according to figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Lawyers declined to share the medical records detailing Mariee's treatment in Dilley, but the lawyers' statements offer an account of Mariee's attempts to fight off a respiratory illness while she was detained.
Juarez and her daughter were held in a processing center in Texas for four days before being taken to the South Texas Family Residential Center.
The city of Eloy collects about $438,000 a year as part of an arrangement with ICE to serve as what a government watchdog report described this year as an "unnecessary middleman" between the agency and CoreCivic.
CoreCivic, with headquarters in Nashville, operates immigration detention facilities throughout the United States, including one in Elizabeth that has around 300 beds.
A company spokeswoman said the company does not provide medical or mental health care services at the Dilley facility. Those services are offered by ICE's Health Service Corps, she said.
"We have deep sympathy for the family and the tragic loss of their child," said the spokeswoman, Amanda Gilchrist. "We care about every person entrusted to us, especially vulnerable populations for which our partners rightfully have very high standards that we work hard to meet each day."
Juarez and Mariee arrived in Dilley on March 5. Juarez requested asylum, citing violence in Guatemala, where danger from gangs and poor economic conditions have driven many migrants to attempt to enter the United States. Her lawyers did not elaborate on the circumstances she faced back home.
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At first, Mariee was happy and healthy, said Jones, the family's lawyer. A medical staffer at the detention center examined Mariee, finding no health problems.
Six days later, Yazmin took Mariee to the facility's medical center because she was coughing and congested. A physician's assistant prescribed Tylenol, and a follow-up in six months, according to an account provided by Arnold & Porter, the law firm representing Juarez.
Yazmin returned the next day with Mariee, who had a fever of more than 104 degrees. She had diarrhea, a chronic cough, congestion and vomiting. A physician's assistant diagnosed an ear infection and acute bronchiolitis. The staffer recommended an antibiotic for her ears, as well as fluids and fever reducers, the law firm said.
Mariee's condition worsened over the next several days, as she lost her appetite and continued coughing and vomiting. Twice, Juarez and Mariee spent hours waiting in a crowded gymnasium with other coughing children, her lawyer said.
Mariee briefly showed signs of improvement during her detention, but her fever returned and she started vomiting clear liquid. The law firm said members of the center's medical staff told Juarez on March 23 that Mariee would be referred to a doctor, but medical records don't show any referral.
Two days later, Juarez and Mariee were released. They took a flight from San Antonio to Newark to meet Juarez's mother. Jones said the medical records show that Mariee was cleared to travel without restrictions, but Juarez's lawyers say that no one examined Mariee that day, and that she was visibly sick.
"It's just basic common sense that when you have a 19-month-old child who's been quite gravely ill, pretty much continuously for two weeks ... that child shouldn't board a commercial airline flight without being actually seen and properly cleared by an appropriate medical professional," Jones said.
The next day, Juarez took Mariee to a pediatrician, then to the emergency room at John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Edison. She had trouble breathing.
Doctors noted that Mariee was experiencing acute respiratory distress with low blood-oxygen levels, lawyers said.
Over the next six weeks, Mariee fought to stay alive as the infection shredded her lungs, Jones said. She was transferred to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune and then to Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, where she was placed on a respiratory life-support machine.
On the morning of May 10, Mariee suffered a hemorrhage that caused irreparable brain and organ damage, Jones said.
Juarez left the hospital the next day with nothing but an ink print of Mariee's right hand. The print was made a day earlier as a Mother's Day gift, the law firm said.
"At just 20 years old, she has been through more than I think most of us could stand in her life," Jones said of Juarez.
Juarez remains in New Jersey with her mother, though lawyers did not specify where. Her asylum application is pending.
The notice of intent says her lawyers plan to sue other, larger entities with ties to the Dilley facility, though no other notices had been filed as of Tuesday.
"There are a number of both public and private entities that are responsible for the unsafe, unsanitary conditions and the inadequate neglectful medical care at Dilley," Jones said, "and we are planning to commence legal proceedings against everyone who's responsible."
Email: ssolis@gannett.com and alvarado@northjersey.com