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Family of 8-Year-Old Migrant Girl Who Died in U.S. Custody Seeks $15 Million
The death of an 8-year-old migrant girl in 2023 while she was in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection prompted investigations and the removal of the agency’s chief medical officer. Now, two immigrant rights groups are seeking $15 million in damages on behalf of the girl’s family.
In a wrongful death claim filed with the federal government on Thursday, lawyers for the family offer the most detailed public account yet of the life and death of the child, Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez, and her family’s efforts to obtain answers about her care in federal custody.
Her death came during a record increase in migration, as the Biden administration struggled to curb illegal crossings and faced criticism about overcrowded detention facilities and the treatment of minors. Illegal crossings plunged in the final months of the Biden administration after a change in asylum policy, and have remained very low under President Trump. But the Trump administration has made families with children targets for detention and removal as President Trump seeks to fulfill a campaign pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, one of the groups that filed the claim, said Anadith’s family wanted to ensure there was accountability and transparency in Customs and Border Protection facilities, which she described as “one of the most obscure and opaque types of detention in our American immigration system.”
“They do not want their daughter to have died in vain,” Ms. Garza said.
Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment on the wrongful death claim. After Anadith’s death, Troy Miller, then acting head of the border agency, requested a review of CBP facilities and made recommendations to address the medical care issues.
Anadith, a Panamanian national, was diagnosed with sickle cell disease and a heart condition at a young age. When she was 5, she traveled with her father to Spain for open-heart surgery and returned to Panama. The family made their way up through Mexico and sought to cross into the United States in May 2023 in hopes of providing safety and a better life for their daughter, according to the complaint.
Her parents, who are Honduran, are members of a long-persecuted Afro-Indigenous population known as Garifuna, and had fled their own country before their daughter was born. The other immigrant rights group that filed the family’s legal claim was the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which focuses on serving Black immigrants.
On May 9, 2023, she, her parents and two siblings were detained alongside other migrants at the border near Brownsville, Texas. The family was then taken to a processing center in Donna, a nearby city, where security camera footage showed her parents handed over their daughter’s medical records to border officials in a medical screening area, the claim states. But medical personnel there did not properly assess her medical history or communicate the details of her medical conditions to the staff at the facility in Harlingen where the family ended up, investigators have found.
Anadith and her family were held in custody for nine days, more than twice as long as newly arrived migrants, particularly children, should be detained, according to the border agency’s own standards. In that time, Anadith exhibited a high fever and complained of pain in her chest and abdomen, among other symptoms, lawyers said.
The claim contends immigration officials failed to provide the girl with proper medical care and to adhere to a 22-year-old consent decree that lays out the minimum standards for care of the nation’s youngest new arrivals. Between the evening of May 14 and her death on May 17, an internal investigation found, medical professionals at the holding facility in Harlingen saw Anadith at least nine times. A nurse practitioner who saw the child told internal investigators that she dismissed three or four requests from Anadith’s mother to call an ambulance or take the child to the hospital.
The previous year, a report from the detention ombudsman at Homeland Security had warned that critical shortages in medical services at border facilities could put migrants’ lives at risk. A report from the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year found the circumstances of Anadith’s death were “not an aberration, but indicative of systemic problems” within border facilities and medical care.
Anadith’s family is now in the process of seeking asylum, and her parents have secured work permits, lawyers said.
In an interview on Thursday, the girl’s mother, Mabel Álvarez, said her family had filed the claim in hopes of preserving Anadith’s memory and preventing another tragedy. She recalled that her daughter was healthy when she first arrived at the South Texas border. But she said the small room where her family was detained was filthy with trash and dust. She also recalled it was frigid, the reason such facilities are often referred to as “hieleras,” or coolers.
Ms. Álvarez wept as she described staff members who she said ignored her pleas for medical attention as her daughter’s condition worsened. After the family’s release from immigration detention, Ms. Álvarez said, she took on a job at a factory in New York, but she had to leave it as she struggled with depression and anxiety.
“It was a difficult thing, that my daughter died in my arms, looking for help,” she said.
The National Quarantine Center is located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
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Sixteen of the 18 passengers transferred to the U.S. from a cruise ship where there was an outbreak of hantavirus arrived in Omaha, Neb., on Monday for evaluation after disembarking the vessel in Spain’s Canary Islands over the weekend.
Of the 15 U.S. citizens and one dual U.S.-British citizen who arrived in Nebraska, all but one are currently being housed in the National Quarantine Unit. That patient tested positive for the virus and was being housed in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, officials said at a Monday news conference. The 15 people in the quarantine unit will continue to be monitored for signs of the illness.
Passengers carry their belongings in plastic bags after being evacuated from the MV Hondius after docking in the Granadilla Port on Sunday in Tenerife, part of the Canary Islands, Spain.
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Nebraska may seem an unlikely location to process these individuals, but it is home to the National Quarantine Unit — the only federally funded quarantine unit in the U.S. — and the separate Nebraska Biocontainment Unit. They are highly specialized facilities located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and widely considered among the best in the world.
The $1 million, five-room biocontainment unit was dedicated in 2005. It was a joint project with Nebraska Health and Human Services and the UNMC. It is set up to safely provide medical care for patients with highly hazardous and infectious diseases and was used in 2014 to treat two doctors infected with Ebola. The National Quarantine Unit was completed in late 2019. It cost nearly $20 million, according to the Associated Press. Both facilities were used during the COVID-19 epidemic.
“We are prepared for situations exactly like this,” Dr. Michael Ash, CEO of Nebraska Medicine, said in a statement. “Our teams have trained for decades alongside federal and state partners to make sure we can safely provide care while protecting our staff and the broader community. We are proud to support this national effort.”
Two additional U.S. passengers on the cruise ship — a couple, with one showing symptoms of hantavirus — were transferred for monitoring to Emory University Hospital, where another advanced biocontainment facility is located.
When the biocontainment unit was first dedicated more than 20 years ago, the biggest concerns were anthrax attacks and severe acute respiratory syndrome, more commonly known as SARS, Dr. Phil Smith, who spearheaded the efforts at Nebraska Medical Center to create the biocontainment unit, told the AP in 2020. Smith died last year.
A hallway leading to rooms at the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
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The quarantine unit features 20 negative-pressure rooms designed to keep potentially harmful particles from escaping by maintaining lower air pressure inside than outside the rooms. The single-occupancy rooms provide patients with attached bathrooms, exercise equipment and Wi-Fi, according to the medical center.
“We have protocols in the quarantine unit that provide for safe care of these of these persons, including just all the activities of daily living so that they can … have a comfortable stay but also have it in an area that’s protected and limits spread of the pathogen,” Dr. Michael Wadman, the medical director of the National Quarantine Unit, said at a Friday news conference.
The biocontainment unit, by contrast, is a patient-care space where people are able to receive medical treatment, Dr. Angela Hewlett, medical director of the biocontainment unit, told reporters Monday.
She emphasized that the facility — which has a 10-bed capacity — operates independently from the quarantine unit and has its own dedicated air-handling system. “We don’t share [it] with any of the rest of the facility,” she said, noting that the unit uses rooftop HEPA filtration and is designed “very differently” from what most people typically imagine in a hospital setting.
One of the rooms in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.
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Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, speaking at Monday’s news conference, welcomed the recently arrived patients, who are among nearly 150 people from 23 different countries who were aboard the MV Hondius when the illness most commonly transmitted to humans through contact with infected rodents broke out. As of Monday, the World Health Organization has reported at least nine cases of hantavirus, including three deaths.
“We’re glad that you’re here,” Pillen said. “We’re going to ensure that you have the best world-class care possible.”
Pillen also sought to reassure Nebraskans that the facilities are safe and secure: “We’re working diligently to ensure no one leaves the security in an unsecured way at an inappropriate time,” he said. “No one poses a risk to public health, just walking out the front door of the streets of Omaha.”
The hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship has been identified as the Andes strain of the illness, one that can be spread, though rarely, from person-to-person, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can cause severe respiratory disease, with early flu-like symptoms.
“The Andes variant of this virus does not spread easily, and it requires prolonged, close contact with someone who is already symptomatic,” according to Adm. Brian Christine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who spoke at Monday’s news conference. “Even so, we have taken this situation very seriously from the very start.”
“The risk of hantavirus to the general public remains very, very low,” he said.
The full quarantine period for hantavirus is 42 days, Christine said, but he added that the patients would be allowed to go home if they remained asymptomatic.
“Right now, the passengers that are all in the assessment phase — they’re going to be here for at least a few days while we do assessments and the coordination on what happens next,” he said, adding that they had the option to remain in the quarantine facility for the full period, for “the safest and most effective option for them.”
new video loaded: Americans Exposed to Hantavirus on Cruise Ship Arrive in United States
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transcript
Americans Exposed to Hantavirus on Cruise Ship Arrive in United States
Eighteen passengers who were aboard the MV Hondius, a cruise ship with a deadly hantavirus outbreak, landed in Omaha on a U.S. government medical flight. The passengers were being monitored at medical facilities in Nebraska and Georgia.
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We’re working diligently to ensure no one leaves the security in an unsecured way at an inappropriate time. No one who poses a risk to public health is walking out the front door of the streets of Omaha or beyond.
By Axel Boada
May 11, 2026
The man charged with attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last month pleaded not guilty at a Monday arraignment in federal court.
Cole Tomas Allen, 31, wearing an orange shirt and trousers, was handcuffed and shackled as he was brought into the courtroom in Washington, D.C., federal court. His handcuffs were attached to a chain around his waist, which clanked as he was led to the defense table.
Speaking on behalf of Allen, federal public defender Tezira Abe said her client “pleads not guilty to all four counts as charged,” including attempting to assassinate the president of the United States, in connection with the April 25 incident at the Washington Hilton hotel.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Jones advised the court that they plan to start producing their first tranche of discovery to the defense by the end of the week.
Officials said Allen, a California teacher and engineer, was armed with multiple guns, as well as knives, when he sprinted through a security checkpoint near the event where Trump and other White House officials had gathered with journalists.
He was arrested after an exchange of gunfire with a U.S. Secret Service officer who fired at him multiple times, a criminal complaint said. Allen was not shot during the exchange. The officer, who was wearing a ballistic vest, was shot once in the chest, treated at a hospital and released.
Trump and top members of his Cabinet and Congress were quickly evacuated from the room as others ducked under tables.
Allen was initially charged with attempting to assassinate the president, transportation of a firearm and ammunition through interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony, and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. On Tuesday, a federal grand jury indicted him on a new charge in the shooting of a Secret Service agent.
Moments before the attack, Allen had sent his family members a note apologizing and criticizing Trump without mentioning the president by name, according to a transcript of some of his writings provided to NBC News by a senior administration official. Allen also wrote that “administration officials (not including Mr. Patel)” were “targets.”
He also appeared to have taken a selfie in his hotel room. Prosecutors said Allen, who was dressed in a black button-down shirt and black pants, was “wearing a small leather bag consistent in appearance with the ammunition-filled bag later recovered from his person,” as well as a shoulder holster, a sheathed knife, pliers and wire cutters.
Officials have said they believe Allen had traveled by train from California to Washington, D.C., before checking into the hotel.
Allen’s sister, Avriana Allen, told law enforcement that her brother would make radical comments and constantly referenced a plan to fix the world, but said their parents were unaware that he had firearms in the home and that he would regularly train at shooting ranges.
Records show that he had purchased a Maverick 12-gauge shotgun in August 2025 and an Armscor Precision .38 semiautomatic pistol in October 2023.
After his arrest, Allen told the FBI that he did not expect to survive the incident, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine. He was briefly placed on suicide watch at the Washington, D.C., jail, where he’s being held.
Allen is expected to appear in court for a June 29 hearing.
At Monday’s arraignment, his legal team said they plan on asking for the “entire office” of the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to be recused because of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s apparent involvement in the case in a “supervisory role.” Federal public defender Eugene Ohm said some of the evidence they receive from the government will further inform that decision.
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