‘Stop complaining’: Immigrant child’s head allegedly cracked open at detention shelter
An 11-year-old immigrant boy wasn’t adequately separated from an older bully inside a shelter for minors, a new lawsuit alleges.
According to the case filed Monday in Miami federal court, for two months, a 14-year-old identified in court documents as M.A harassed his younger roommate, Geremy. And despite his bloody skull and pleas to the guards, no one removed the boy from harm’s way.
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“Stop complaining,” the supervising employees allegedly told Geremy Asig-Putul, who was separated from his mother, Otilia Asig-Putul, at the U.S.-Mexico border in May.
Asig-Putul, an asylum-seeker, arrived at the border in Arizona on May 9th from northern Guatemala with her son and nephew. Three days later the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services separated Asig-Putul and Geremy.
Geremy was sent to a shelter for immigrant children in Chicago run by Illinois-based company, Heartland Human Care Services, Inc.
The suit also alleges that when M.A. tripped Geremy — causing him to bang his head against a metal bed frame and bleed out — the staff took him to the hospital to be stitched up, placed him back in the room with M.A., and never told his mother.
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“A little bit more and they would have given my son back to me in a small wooden box,” Asig-Putul said.
The distraught mother, recently reunited with her son in Miami after being in an Arizona jail cell for 35 days and being released in mid June.
She formally filed the negligence lawsuit against Heartland on Monday, and spoke with the Miami Herald to discuss their nightmarish experience.
“My most vivid memory is being told my child was going to be taken away from me as I was cuffed at the wrists and ankles,” she said with her face in her palms. “I begged the guards to not let my son see me in handcuffs. I made him turn around. What was he going to think of his mother?”
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