‘Intentional cruelty’: asylum seekers are dying at US-Mexico border, say advocates

Complaint details human rights violations, including lack of food, water and shelter and denial of emergency care

Theresa Cheng was volunteering with mutual aid groups at the US-Mexico border when she learned of a migrant on the US side of the wall with severe injuries. Cheng, an emergency physician, rushed to an encampment where asylum seekers wait to be processed by border patrol and pumped frantically on the chest of a 13-year-old boy bleeding on the ground while volunteers dialed 911.

It took 60 minutes - nearly as much time as Cheng and another migrant did CPR on the teen - for an ambulance and emergency medical services to arrive at the scene in eastern San Diego county. The boy, whom local media identified as Dario Zamudio, had suffered traumatic injuries in a car collision on the Mexican side of the border and had been taken to the border wall to receive quicker treatment.