Wrongful death lawsuit filed by family of first person to die from COVID-19 in immigration custody mdjonline.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mdjonline.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
FAIRFIELD-SUISUN, CALIFORNIA
Wrongful death lawsuit filed by family of first person to die from COVID-19 in immigration custody [The San Diego Union-Tribune]
The family of Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia, who died in immigration custody after contracting the coronavirus during an outbreak at Otay Mesa Detention Center, has sued the federal government as well as the private prison company in charge of the facility.
Escobar Mejia was the first person to die in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement because of COVID-19. Eight in total have died from the virus since the pandemic began.
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of California by Escobar Mejia’s three siblings, alleges negligence, deliberate indifference to serious health and safety needs and wrongful death.
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Luna Guzmán left Guatemala four years ago with the goal of reaching California. She had to face violence and sexual harassment while she was detained in a migrant detention center near San Diego and was later infected with COVID-19 while she waited for her asylum process in Tijuana.
(Courtest of Luna Guzmán)
When she turned 15, like so many girls in her town in Guatemala, Luna Guzmán celebrated with a quinceañera.
“My friend lent me the dress because she saw the way I used to cry every time we passed the dress shop on the way to school, with all those beautiful dresses,” she said in Spanish. “I would just press my hand up against the glass and stare at them for a long time.”
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She never returned.
Waiting outside her apartment was an officer of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The young undocumented mother soon found herself processed and detained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center, a government-contracted facility in San Diego run by the private prison company CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America.
Separated from her three daughters and facing a high-risk prison pregnancy owing to a difficult history with child-bearing, she experienced what her sister, Izabel, described to
Newsweek as a level of despair that left her despondent at the time and traumatized to this day.
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