Ten-year old Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano has reportedly fallen ill after returning home to Minnesota from Dilley’s South Texas Family Residential Center amid a measles outbreak at the site.
Caisaguano, who was released Wednesday with her mother, is experiencing flu-like symptoms and has broken out with hives, Democracy Now reports. The symptoms, which appear similar to measles, raise concerns about her health following at least two confirmed cases of the highly infectious virus at the family detention facility over the weekend.
Around 1,400 people are packed into the Dilley center, which is used to detain families arrested under the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown.
It’s unclear as of press time whether Caisaguano actually contracted the measles, however.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, measles starts with flu-like symptoms and a rash and can lead to life-threatening complications like brain inflammation and pneumonia, particularly in young children.
Caisaguano and her mother, Rosa Elena Caisaguano Cajilema, were arrested Jan. 6 and have spent the past month at the South Texas detention center, located approximately an hour southwest of San Antonio.
Caisaguano called her father to inform him that she was with federal agents after they arrested her mother, though there is no evidence the mother is here illegally, according to media reports. After the 4th grader said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents would bring her to school, her father reportedly rushed there to await her arrival.
However, the 10-year-old was already on her way to Dilley, according to media reports.
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson claimed in a statement provided to nonprofit newsroom Sahan Journal that agents allowed Caisaguano to make phone calls in order to “place the child in the custody of someone that she designated.”
“She failed to find a trusted adult to care for the child, so officers kept the family together for the welfare of the child,” the DHS spokesperson’s statement added.
However the ICE statement failed to acknowledge that the child’s father and school waited for her for hours at the campus she attended, Sahan Journal reports.
“In my profession, I have seen many people break down in grief, but that image of Elizabeth’s father will stay with me forever,” school counselor Tracy Xiong said in press conference, Sahan News reports. “I watched him sit in his car, bury his head in his hands, and cry uncontrollably. Those are images you do not forget.”
The Dilley measles outbreak was confirmed by ICE officials after the San Antonio Current broke the story on Sunday, prompting U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, to call for the facility to be “shut down.”
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