Update, 2:45 p.m. Wednesday: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is temporarily suspending intake at the McAllen Central Processing Center, the largest migrant processing center in South Texas, after the outbreak of what the agency calls "a flu-related illness."
It is the same facility where a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy became ill last week, and died after he was transferred to another Border Patrol station.
According to a CBP spokesman, after identifying 32 individuals who tested positive for influenza, all were provided treatment on the site or in local hospitals "as appropriate." As of Wednesday afternoon, the Central Processing Center resumed operations.
CBP officials say Carlos Hernandez Vazquez was found unresponsive on Monday morning. A nurse practitioner had diagnosed him with influenza A, and he had been moved between facilities to separate him from other migrants to stop the spread of the flu.
"A large number" of migrants were complaining of high fevers and other "flu-related" symptoms at McAllen, CBP said in a statement late Tuesday. The agency said medical staff are providing treatment, but it has decided to suspend taking in more migrants "to avoid the spread of illness."
More than a dozen immigrants interviewed Tuesday at the Catholic Charities Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, described coughing and feverish children at the overcrowded processing center — where hundreds of people are kept together in fenced pens or frigid holding cells, or sleep outside in the parking lot.
Carmen Juarez, from Chiquimula, Guatemala, said she and her 6-year-old daughter were asked to sleep "under the stars" at the McAllen processing center because her daughter had a fever. There were hundreds of other migrants also sleeping outside, she said.
"There were kids getting sicker. They're hungry," she told NPR. "The little ones don't eat the ham sandwiches they hand out."
Hernandez is the fifth migrant child to die after being apprehended crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in the past six months. Before December, no child had died in Customs and Border Protection custody in more than a decade.
The latest death came days after the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas complained to federal officials that migrants were being subjected to poor conditions in overcrowded detention and processing facilities in the Rio Grande Valley. The group also requested an investigation by the Department Homeland Security Office of Inspector General.
