Shawdesh Desk: El Salvadoran man who crossed into the U.S. with his daughter collapsed at a border station and later died at a hospital, officials said Saturday. The man had been held about a week at the Rio Grande Valley central processing center in McAllen, Texas, according to a law enforcement official. The official said the man, who had health issues, had been medically checked. He was 43-year-old. The daughter was still in U.S. Border Patrol custody, but officials had requested an expedited transfer to a shelter run by the agency that manages children who cross the border alone, the official said. The official did not know the daughter’s age.
The child will be in a shelter until she is released to a sponsor, but that process could take weeks. The official was not authorized to divulge details of an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. According to a statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the man’s cause of death is not yet known. The facility, like most other Border Patrol stations along the U.S.-Mexico border, is overcrowded. A review of the death was underway, and Congress and the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, the watchdog that oversees the border agencies, has been notified, according to the statement. So was the El Salvadoran government.Border stations are generally at capacity with about 4,000 people, and more than 15,000 are in custody. Advocates and attorneys have decried fetid, filthy conditions inside the stations that were not meant as more than a temporary holding station.