translated from Spanish: CNDH holds INM responsible for migrant death with COVID

A Salvadoran migrant died on April 22 at The Enrique Cabrera Hospital in Mexico City with symptoms of COVID-19. This person had been delivered a week earlier to the migration station in Tijuana, Baja California, to be deported.
The National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) is now responsible to the institution led by Francisco Garduño “for human rights violations of health protection, to life and health information, in the grievance of a migrant of Salvadoran nationality, who died as a result of COVID-19, by institutional responsibility attributable to the INM, and by the negligence and omission of staff of that Institute, which contributed to the deterioration of his health and his death.”
Read: 60% of migrants from Mexico and Central America postponed their plans due to the COVID-1 pandemic
Recommendation 34/2020, addressed to the INM commissioner, Francisco Garduño Yáñez, is the first official recognition of the death of a migrant within a Mexican detention centre.
Institutions have always denied contagion. In fact, deputy communication Carlos Bohórquez stated at a virtual meeting with Members held on 12 May that to date there was no case of contagion in migration stations. Three weeks earlier, this Salvadoran migrant had died in the hospital, which he was taken to from the detention center in Mexico City.
Recently, in an official statement dated 6 August, the INM reiterated that it did not have “to date, the registration of some case of COVID-19 contagion among the migrant population housed in migration stations or temporary stays”.
Animal Politics consulted INM on the recommendation but at the close of the edition had received no response.
The CNDH holds CDMX migrant station staff accountable for “omitting adequate medical care based on the multiple risk factors suffered by the victim, and timely identifying a suspicious coVID-19 table and for not channeling the aggrieved person to a nosocomio for specialized medical care.”
Read: COVID-19 not for migration, 84% of migrants only postpone their journey
In turn, the Human Rights Institution ensures that the INM failed to prove that health care and healthy distance measures had been implemented inside the detention centre, “putting at greater risk of SARS-CoV-2 contagion, all persons who were housed, worked or transited through the immigration compound during the period when the events occurred.”
On August 5, a judge gave an ultimatum to the INM commissioner, Francisco Garduño, and urged him to comply with the April suspension of protection ordering prevention measures to prevent COVID-19, as well as to report on protocols used within migration stations.
Migration’s response was to simply ensure that it complies with legal provisions and to deny contagion, something that the CNDH has denied.
In its recommendation, the CNDH requests the INM to coordinate with the Executive Committee on Victim Care (CEAV) to “locate, register in the National Register of Victims and comprehensively repair family members who prove their right, for damage caused to the victim, are granted psychological and tanatological care, and are clearly and accurately informed of the right that assists them to have a status of stay in national territory and, where appropriate, issue the corresponding immigration documents”.
In addition, it requests Garduño to cooperate in the integration of the investigative folder to be started on the occasion of the complaint that the CNDH will make to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic.
The CNDH requested to ensure that persons in the context of migration housed in, as well as those entering, transiting and working therein, ensure strict compliance with the measures established by the INM-COVID-19 Protocol, to which the Personal Protection Team should be provided to prevent COVID-19 contagions; design and teach courses on the human rights of migrants, as well as on the pathology “COVID-19”, and the INM-COVID-19 Protocol, for medical, legal and administrative personnel who are attached to migration stations, temporary stays and places enabled by the INM.
Finally, it requested to update Protocol INM-COVID-19 and to issue an internal circular instructing medical personnel attached to immigration stations and provisional stays of the INM, on the obligation to integrate the clinical record of migrants receiving medical care, theabhorring a protocol to be followed for cases where medical emergencies exist.
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Original source in Spanish