SAN ANTONIO SECORTEZ, Guatemala: Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin received her first pair of shoes several weeks ago, when her father said they would set out together for the United States, thousands of miles from this small indigenous community in Guatemala where she spent her days plodding through mud and surrounded by coconut trees.
The 7-year-old was excited about the possibility of a new life in another country, relatives said Saturday. Maybe she would get her first toy, or learn to read and write.
Instead she died in a Texas hospital two days after being taken into custody by US Border Patrol agents in a remote stretch of New Mexico desert.
The death has drawn attention to the increasingly perilous routes that Central American migrants traverse to reach the US, where some plan to apply for asylum, and to the way migrants are treated once in custody. Jakelin’s family says her father paid a human smuggler to sneak them across the border; asylum wasn’t the plan.
Sadness hangs in the air outside the tiny wooden house with a straw roof, dirt floors, a few bedsheets and a fire pit for cooking where Jakelin used to sleep with her parents and three siblings. The brothers are barefoot, their feet caked with mud and their clothes in tatters. A heart constructed out of wood and wrapped in plastic announces Jakelin’s death.
Grandfather Domingo Caal said the family got by on $5 a day earned harvesting corn and beans. But it wasn’t enough. Jakelin’s father Nery Caal decided to migrate with his favorite child to earn money he could send back home. Nery often took his daughter to fish at a nearby river. The long journey north would be an even greater adventure.
The girl leapt with joy when she was told about the trip, Domingo Caal said in Spanish.
The people of San Antonio Secortez, a lush mountain hamlet with 420 inhabitants within the municipality of Raxruha, speak the Mayan Q’eqchi’ language, though most of the men also know Spanish.
Domingo Caal translated for Claudia Maquin as she attempted to describe her daughter’s life while holding back tears. Jakelin liked to climb trees, Claudia said, but she gives few details.
“Every time they ask me what happened to the girl, it hurts me again,” Maquin said.
Members of 13 families from San Antonio Secortez have established homes in the US, and community members set off firecrackers to celebrate each time word arrived that one of the townsfolk had made it. The Caals said they believed that Jakelin and Nery would make it, too.
“He was desperate,” Domingo Caal said, explaining that his son borrowed money — using his plot of land as guarantee — to pay for the voyage.
The girl and her father, 29-year-old Nery Gilberto Caal Cuz, were arrested with a large group of migrants near the Antelope Wells border crossing at about 9:15 p.m. on Dec. 6 in a dry, rugged area is flecked with ghost towns and abandoned buildings.
US Customs and Border Protection said Friday that the girl initially appeared healthy and that an interview raised no signs of distress. Authorities said her father spoke in Spanish to border agents and signed a form indicating she was in good health.
Jakelin’s death drew immediate questions from members of Congress and others about whether more could have been done. There were only four agents working with a group of 163 migrants, including 50 unaccompanied children, and only one bus to take them to the nearest station 94 miles away. The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general has opened an investigation.
That single bus set out on a several-hour trip to the Border Patrol station filled with unaccompanied minors — following protocol — while the daughter and her father waited for it to return.
Once on the bus, about eight hours after having been apprehended, Jakelin began vomiting. Officials said agents radioed ahead to have emergency medical technicians available in Lordsburg. When they arrived, 90 minutes later, she had stopped breathing. Emergency crews revived her, and she was airlifted to an El Paso, Texas, hospital, to which the father was driven.
The girl died at about 12:30 a.m. Dec. 8, roughly 19 hours after she began throwing up on the bus and 27 hours after being apprehended. Officials said she had swelling on her brain and liver failure. An autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death. The results could take weeks.
Girl who died fled intensely poor Guatemalan village
Girl who died fled intensely poor Guatemalan village
- US Customs and Border Protection said Friday that the girl initially appeared healthy and that an interview raised no signs of distress
- Grandfather Domingo Caal said the family got by on $5 a day earned harvesting corn and beans
Belarus frees protest leader Kolesnikova, Nobel winner Bialiatski
- The charismatic Kolesnikova was the star of the 2020 movement that presented the most serious challenge to Lukashenko in his 30-year rule
- Bialiatski — a 63-year-old veteran rights defender and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner — is considered by Lukashenko to be a personal enemy
VILNIUS: Belarusian street protest leader Maria Kolesnikova and Nobel Prize winner Ales Bialiatski walked free on Saturday with 121 other political prisoners released in an unprecedented US-brokered deal.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has locked up thousands of his opponents, critics and protesters since the 2020 election, which rights groups said was rigged and which triggered weeks of protests that almost toppled him.
The charismatic Kolesnikova was the star of the 2020 movement that presented the most serious challenge to Lukashenko in his 30-year rule.
She famously ripped up her passport as the KGB tried to deport her from the country.
Bialiatski — a 63-year-old veteran rights defender and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner — is considered by Lukashenko to be a personal enemy. He has documented rights abuses in the country, a close ally of Moscow, for decades.
Bialiatski stressed he would carry on fighting for civil rights and freedom for political prisoners after his surprise release, which he called a “huge emotional shock.”
“Our fight continues, and the Nobel Prize was, I think, a certain acknowledgement of our activity, our aspirations that have not yet come to fruition,” he told media in an interview from Vilnius.
“Therefore the fight continues,” he added.
He was awarded the prize in 2022 while already in jail.
After being taken out of prison, he said he was put on a bus and blindfolded until they reached the border with Lithuania.
His wife, Natalia Pinchuk, told AFP that her first words to him on his release were: “I love you.”
- ‘All be free’ -
Most of those freed, including Kolesnikova, were unexpectedly taken to Ukraine, surprising their allies who had been waiting for all of them in Lithuania.
She called for all political prisoners to be released.
“I’m thinking of those who are not yet free, and I’m very much looking forward to the moment when we can all embrace, when we can all see one another, and when we will all be free,” she said in a video interview with a Ukrainian government agency.
Hailing Bialiatski’s release, the Nobel Committee told AFP there were still more than 1,200 political prisoners inside the country.
“Their continued detention starkly illustrates the ongoing, systemic repression in the country,” said chairman Jorgen Watne Frydnes.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said their release should “strengthen our resolve... to keep fighting for all remaining prisoners behind bars in Belarus because they had the courage to speak truth to power.”
Jailed opponents of Lukashenko are often held incommunicado in a prison system notorious for its secrecy and harsh treatment.
There had been fears for the health of both Bialiatski and Kolesnikova while they were behind bars, though in interviews Saturday they both said they felt okay.
The deal was brokered by the United States, which has pushed for prisoners to be freed and offered some sanctions relief in return.
- Potash relief -
An envoy of US President Donald Trump, John Coale, was in Minsk this week for talks with Lukashenko.
He told reporters from state media that Washington would remove sanctions on the country’s potash industry, without providing specific details.
A US official separately told AFP that one American citizen was among the 123 released.
Minsk also freed Viktor Babariko, an ex-banker who tried to run against Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential election but was jailed instead.
Kolesnikova was part of a trio of women, including Svetlana Tikhanovskaya who stood against Lukashenko and now leads the opposition in exile, who headed the 2020 street protests.
She was serving an 11-year sentence in a prison colony.
In 2020, security services had put a sack over her head and drove her to the Ukrainian border. But she ripped up her passport, foiling the deportation plan, and was placed under arrest.
Former prisoners from the Gomel prison where she was held have told AFP she was barred from talking to other political prisoners and regularly thrown into harsh punishment cells.
An image of Kolesnikova making a heart shape with her hands became a symbol of anti-Lukashenko protests.
Bialiatski founded Viasna in the 1990s, two years after Lukashenko became president.
