Six protestors, including two doctors, were arrested by federal authorities on Tuesday while protesting the lack of vaccines for detained migrant children, The Washington Post reports.
Several groups have offered to provide flu vaccines for migrant children who are being detained by Customs and Border Protection after three died from the disease while in custody last year, but CBP has not agreed.
On Tuesday, six people laid down across an entrance to CBP's San Diego Sector headquarters in Chula Vista, California, in protest of the agency's refusal. Federal officers arrested the group and later released them with a citation "for failure to comply with the lawful directions of a federal police officer" after they were given a six-minute warning to leave.
"I've never had to fight so hard to give a vaccination to anyone, any patient, any population of patients who have needed it the most," said Dr. Bonnie Arzuaga, one of the protestors and a pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital. "As a physician, I'm saddened by the stance our government has taken to deny basic preventative medicine to the people it is holding in its custody."
"Even though I'm not calm about any of this, I have to be fearless because people are dying at this point," Dr. Mario Mendoza, a retired clinical anesthesiologist, told the Los Angeles Times before he was taken into custody. "This is a consequence I'm willing to accept. I can't live without doing this. I can't sleep at night."
The agency told the Post: "It has never been a CBP practice to administer vaccines and this is not a new policy. We would encourage those who wish to volunteer medical services to go to shelters and NGO facilities, both in the U.S. and in Mexico, to donate their time and services."
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