Border Patrol failed to conduct welfare checks on migrant boy who died in 2019, probe finds

U.S. Border Patrol failed to conduct "regular and frequent" welfare checks on a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant boy who died in the agency's custody in 2019, and at least one agent reported checks that never happened, an internal government probe found.

By failing to frequently monitor Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez during his stay inside a Border Patrol station cell in south Texas, U.S. agents violated internal Customs and Border Protection policy, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General concluded this week after a years-long investigation.

When he died in May 2019, Hernández Vásquez, who crossed the southern border as an unaccompanied child after leaving an indigenous community in Guatemala, became the sixth migrant minor to die after entering U.S. custody during a six-month period starting in December 2018. An autopsy later determined the Guatemalan teenager died of the flu and complications from other infections.