A pregnant woman who fell off the wall west of El Paso died last year, and Border Patrol, CBP, takes many badly injured people to clinics near the border, reported the Texas Standard, but their report also interviewed several people who were sent back across the border in trauma without medical treatment. It is negligence, charged Pastor Rosalio Sosa, a director of Mexican shelters helping the injured immigrants. “They just pick them up and send them over here. No wheelchair, nothing. Not even a Tylenol.”
When it is apparent that someone is hurt we will administer first aid and request assistance as needed,” responded El Paso Sector CBP Chief Gloria Chavez in an email to Texas Standard.
Fall trauma ranges from multiple leg fractures, broken ankles, hips, pelvises, ribs, and “a good number of spinal injures,” according to the director of Annunciation House, an organization that provides temporary shelter for migrants and refugees in El Paso,
CBP’s own standards on transport and detention say, “Any observed or reported injury or illness must be reported, and appropriate medical care must be provided or sought in a timely manner.” CBP says they have no record the immigrants were injured when they were expelled back to Mexico.
By Milan Sime Martinic