Migrant files claim over daughter's death after US detention

A Guatemalan asylum seeker has filed a claim against US authorities for the "wrongful death" of her daughter, who died six weeks after their detention by US immigration police, her attorneys said.

Yazmin Juarez, 20, and her 19-month-old daughter Mariee were apprehended when they crossed the Rio Grande River in March 2018 from Mexico and held at a detention facility in Dilley, Texas.

"Those responsible for providing safe, sanitary conditions and proper medical care failed this little girl, and it caused her to die a painful death," attorney R Stanton Jones of the law firm Arnold and Porter said in a statement yesterday.

"Mariee Juarez entered Dilley a healthy baby girl and 20 days later was discharged a gravely ill child with a life-threatening respiratory infection," he said.

After her release, the girl was transferred to two different hospitals and died on May 10, 2018.

Arnold and Porter sent a notice of claim -- a step prior to a lawsuit -- on behalf of Juarez to Eloy, Arizona, an intermediary between the federal government and the private firm that operates the detention facility in Dilley.