Brandon Judd: ‘Father Should Be Held Responsible for the Death’ of Migrant Girl

Members of the Caal Maquin family and neighbors stand in front of Claudia Maquin's ho
AP Photo/Oliver de Ros
Robert Kraychik

Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, spoke with Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Tonight about the death of a seven-year-old Guatemalan migrant girl on December 8 while in Border Patrol custody. Judd told Senior Editors-at-Large Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak that responsibility for her death lies with her father.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials released a detailed timeline relating to the death of seven-year-old Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin. The girl crossed the New Mexico-Mexico border on December 6 as part of a group of 163 migrants and died shortly after midnight on December 8.  Nery Gilberto Caal, the girl’s father, reportedly told the Guatemalan Consul General he had “no complaints” about how Border Patrol agents treated him and his daughter, saying agents did everything possible to help her.

Judd said, “We did everything right, yet we’re still getting castigated. The problem in this country, right now, is the mainstream media and the hard-left, they vilify the law enforcement agents — the good guys — and they glamorize the criminals. This father should be held responsible for the death of this little girl.”

Judd added, “If I were to take my children and I were to trek across the border and not give them water, not give them food, not give them anything, [Child Protective Services] would take my children out of my hands, and I would be charged with all kinds of crimes. To make this a border patrol agent’s fault is ridiculous, especially when we do have people like James Epling … the people that go out and serve our country so well, to make us the bad guys and vilify our law enforcement is just flat-out wrong.”

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Mansour stated, “This little girl died of dehydration and from the complications surrounding that. That’s not something that could have happened to her within just the nine hours that she was in the custody of our Border Patrol agents. You don’t die of dehydration that quickly… She must’ve been suffering for quite some time.”

Judd replied, “Yes, she would have had to. We’re still waiting on the definitive report. There are some reports out there saying she died of septic shock, which means that she would have had a blood-borne disease. She would have had sepsis. If that’s the case, that doesn’t happen in nine hours. So there could’ve been multiple issues with this girl that ultimately she succumbed to. If, in fact, it was septic shock — and complicated by dehydration — there’s no way that all of those factors happened while she was in our custody.”

Judd described Rep. Julian Castro’s (D-TX) calls for an “investigation” of the girl’s death as made in bad faith.

“For everybody to put the blame on us, for the mainstream media [and] hardcore liberal politicians to put the blame on us is disgusting. It’s wrong, and the American public needs to understand. People like Joaquin Castro that are calling for these intensive investigations, and [saying they] want to get to the bottom of it, they really don’t want to know what happened. They really don’t want to get to the bottom of it because once they do, the narrative is not going to fit their talking points, and, frankly, they’ll just change and move on because they’ll know they made their political points, and they’ll pretend like it never even happened.”

Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 weeknights from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern or 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific.

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