A private company called CoreCivic that operates a migrant family detention center in Dilley, Texas is being sued for the death of one-year-old Mariee Juárez.
The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday by Mariee's mother Yazmin whose lawyers are demanding $40 million from the corrections company.
A woman whose 1-year-old daughter died weeks after they were released from an immigration detention center in Texas has filed a lawsuit against the private prison company that operates the facility. https://t.co/4DsVLY3Hvt
— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) July 31, 2019The complaint is the third filed since last year when Yazmin's lawyers filed a claim against the US government for $60 million which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).
In addition, a $40 million lawsuit was also filed against the city of Eloy, Arizona for an unusual contract agreement with ICE who serve as "middle-men" to fund CoreCivic.
Mariee Juárez's Death via Migrant Detention
As reported in the video below, Yazmin and her daughter were detained by immigration officials in March of last year.
Yazmin says that Mariee was healthy and happy in the beginning when they arrived at the detention facility. But within days she became ill, likely from other migrant detainees who were also ill.
ICE is said to be responsible for medical care at such facilities which a spokeswoman for CoreCivic confirms in her statement.
The detention facility records show that a physician's assistant had initially diagnosed the toddler with an upper respiratory infection.
The following day, Mariee's fever spiked to 104 degrees.
Juárez returned to the onsite clinic where another physician diagnosed her daughter with bronchiolitis and an ear infection.
Despite her pleas, they did not get the medical attention they needed until after they were released to family in New Jersey.
By the time they were able to take her to a hospital for treatment, the illness had taken its toll and Mariee died on May 10, 2018, six weeks after being released.
ABC News goes into more details about limits of the care Mariee was provided with while at Texas facility.
Migrant Detention Officials Respond
On July 10 of this year, Yazmin attended a hearing before the Democratically-led House Oversight and Reform subcommittee where she told her story.
The Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" enforcement on asylum seekers has resulted in detainment tactics that have reportedly created poor and unsanitary conditions in these migrant detention facilities.
To add, President Trump's immigration policy also includes family separation.
CoreCivic's financial statements from last year alone reveal that the private company made $171 million in revenue from the Dilley facility.
One of Yazmin's attorneys said:
"We don't believe that it's ever appropriate for jail small children. At a minimum, if CoreCivic is making huge amounts of money to run a jail for children, there are legal duties that come with that."
In July 2018, ICE's acting director, Matthew Albence described facilities like the one in Dilley as being better suited than the cells managed by Border Patrol saying that they were "more like a summer camp."
NBCNews reports, the spokeswoman for CoreCivic, Amanda Gilchrist released a statement in response to the lawsuit saying that they "had deep sympathy for the family and the tragic loss of their child." She said, "We care about every person entrusted to us, especially vulnerable populations for which our partners rightfully have very high standards that we work hard to meet each day."
But many complaints documented by lawyers and advocates for asylum seekers refer to immigrant mothers who say that they've been denied any serious medical treatment from those migrant detention facilities.
