An unaccompanied 17-year-old migrant from Honduras died in a shelter in Florida on Wednesday, according to authorities.
Investigators on Friday were still trying to determine a cause for the teen’s death, which came as the US lifted immigration restrictions stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Honduran officials identified the dead child as Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza. The statement said the US government informed Honduras of Maradiaga’s death on Thursday.
Espinoza was admitted into the Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services shelter in Safe Harbor, Florida, on 5 May without being accompanied by a parent or guardian. Five days later, he was taken to a nearby hospital after being found unconscious and was declared dead after an hour of CPR attempts.
Honduran officials said an autopsy will be performed to determine a cause of death.
The Honduran secretary of foreign affairs, Enrique Reina, said on Thursday night on Twitter that government is in contact with Espinoza’s family, along with the US Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and the health and human services department (HHS), the American government agencies that oversee the placement of migrants in shelters.
“The government of Honduras, through the embassy in Washington, is in contact with the family and has requested that ORR and HHS carry out an exhaustive investigation of the case to clarify this fact and, if there is any responsibility, apply the full weight of the law,” Reina said.
HHS sent out a congressional notice to lawmakers on Friday that alerted them to the death.
In a statement, HHS said that it “is deeply saddened by this tragic loss and our heart goes out to the family, with whom we are in touch”. The department said that the ORR’s division of health for unaccompanied children “is reviewing all clinical details of this case, including all inpatient health care records”.
“A medical examiner investigation is underway. Due to privacy and safety reasons, ORR cannot share further information on individual cases of children who have been in our care,” the statement reads.
At a press conference on Friday afternoon, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said “our heart goes out to the family” and directed further questions to HHS.
News of Espinoza’s death arrived a day after the US ended what have come to be known as Title 42 restrictions. The restrictions blocked the right of many migrants to claim asylum at the US-Mexico border citing health concerns related to Covid-19.
Joe Biden’s administration has replaced Title 42 restrictions with new measures aimed at preventing and deterring people from entering the border illegally. The White House has sent 24,000 border patrol agents and officers to the border to enforce the new restrictions.
In the hours before the new regulations went into effect, migrants scrambled in the borderlands, crossing rivers and scaling walls, in attempts to cross the border for midnight on Thursday.
Advocacy groups, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over the new regulations, criticizing the White House’s strategy as being substantially similar to the Donald Trump administration’s immigration policy.
