A three-year-old girl from Venezuela being transported to Chicago from Texas by bus with other migrants died at a local Illinois hospital after showing signs of illness, the Texas department of emergency management said on Friday.
“Once the child presented with health concerns, the bus pulled over and security personnel on board called 9-1-1 for emergency attention,” the TDEM said in a written statement.
“After the ambulance arrived, the bilingual security personnel translated for the parents and the paramedics who were providing care for the child,” the statement said. “The child was then taken to a local hospital to receive additional medical attention and was later pronounced deceased.”
Because the girl died in the Chicago area, the Illinois department of public health was investigating her death, a spokesperson told the Chicago Tribune.
“IDPH is working with local health officials, state police and federal authorities to the fullest extent possible to get answers in this tragic situation,” IDPH spokeswoman Lauri Sanders told the Tribune.
Published reports said the girl was pronounced dead on Thursday evening.
Texas officials did not release a cause of death for the child but said none of the bus passengers presented with symptoms of fever or illness when they boarded in Brownsville, Texas, which borders Mexico. It was not clear if she had undergone an autopsy.
The officials did not release any identifying information about the child but CBS news reported that she was a girl from Venezuela.
In May, NBC News reported that the Texas governor Greg Abbott told the Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot that he would not stop sending migrants to her city, even though she pleaded with him to halt the action.
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Lightfoot had written in a letter that the city does not have the resources to keep up with the flow of people. Chicago has been grappling with where to house migrants as social service groups told NBC News they are running out of space.
At a news conference in May, Illinois governor Jay Pritzker said, “Resources are stretched. I think that Governor Abbott is doing what he thinks is the most political thing that he can do to cause problems in the country for Democratically-controlled states and cities, and that’s why he’s doing it.”
Texas has bused more than 30,000 migrants to Democratic-controlled cities across the US since last year as part of Abbott’s sprawling border mission known as Operation Lone Star. Besides Chicago, buses have also been sent to Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Denver and Los Angeles.
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