🚨Democrats Made This Tweet Go Viral. Turned Out She Died in ICE Custody When Joe Biden Was President. The Cruelty Has Been Bi-Partisan for Generations.

If you only care about an injustice when you think Donald Trump did it, then you don't really care about the injustice at all. It's just politics to you.

Two days ago, Senate Democrats posted about an 8-year-old girl who died in U.S. custody, and the post went viral.

The assumption was that it must have happened under Donald Trump and Stephen Miller—because the cruelty we’re watching right now makes that assumption feel easy.

But the public context note mattered: Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez died in 2023, under Joe Biden—while Border Patrol held her. And then the volume dropped and the outrage disappeared.

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Let me be clear about something before I go any further.

I loathe Donald Trump. I loathe Stephen Miller. They are deeply unjust. They are openly cruel. They’ve built policies designed to terrorize immigrant communities and normalize suffering.

But if we only care about injustice when our political enemies do it, then we don’t actually care about justice. We care about team sports.

And a child’s death should never be used as a political football.

Anadith deserved better than selective outrage.

What happened to Anadith, in plain human language

According to reporting from news reports from 2023, Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez—an 8-year-old girl—died in Border Patrol custody on May 17th, 2023 after spending more than a week in detention facilities where staff dismissed or downplayed her pain and declined to take her to a hospital multiple times, according to her family and preliminary government reports.

Her parents say they begged. Over and over.

Her mother, Mabel Alvarez, told CBS News that a Border Patrol agent stood in front of her daughter and said:

“Tell me how you can’t breathe because a girl that can’t breathe would be passing out and you’re not passing out, you’re fine.”

That is a government agent speaking like that to an 8-year-old child in his custody.

Let that sit in your spirit. That sentence is a crime scene all by itself.

Alvarez said her pleas were treated like “a joke.” She said:

“They wouldn’t call an ambulance until she passed out — not before.”

And when they finally called one, the ambulance arrived in about five minutes. That’s when the mother realized how close the hospital was—how easily this could have been avoided—how needless it all was.

CBS News reports that Anadith had sickle cell anemia and a heart condition. Her parents said she was fine when she entered custody. But after days in detention, her health began to deteriorate. She developed abdominal pain, nasal congestion, a cough, and she tested positive for the flu. Her fever reportedly reached 104.9 degrees.

CBS reports she was seen by medical staff at least nine times at a Border Patrol station in Harlingen, Texas. She was given Tamiflu and fever medication, ice packs, and even a cold shower.

But she was not taken to a hospital—despite multiple requests from her mother and despite Anadith herself begging.

Her mother said Anadith told staff:

“I’m getting a little strength just to explain I can’t breathe. Not in my mouth nor my nose.”

And her father, Rossel Reyes, recalled seeing his daughter in distress and feeling something no parent should ever feel. He told CBS News he thought his daughter was saying:

“Daddy, I can’t go on. They killed me. I can’t go on.”

And then she collapsed. She suffered a seizure. She was finally transferred to a hospital minutes away and pronounced dead soon after.

Her mother said something that will break you if you let it:

“No one is going to argue that with me because I was carrying her and mothers know.”

“Clearly preventable.” That is not my phrase. That is an official finding.

CBS News reports that an independent federal court monitor called Anadith’s death “clearly preventable” and the result of “a series of failures” by government staff and contractors… under Joe Biden.

A top CBP official speaking anonymously to CBS News conceded this:

“It is my clinical opinion that were she treated differently that she would be alive today.”

And CBS reports that a nurse contractor admitted denying at least three requests to send Anadith to the hospital. Investigators found contractors failed to contact an on-call pediatrician and failed to properly document and review her medical visits and history.

This wasn’t a mystery illness. This wasn’t a lightning strike. This wasn’t “nobody could have known.”

This was a sick child with known risk factors, deteriorating in custody, while adults with power said no. Over and over.

The quiet truth: cruelty in immigration detention is bipartisan

Now, here’s where I need to speak directly to the moral sickness this revealed in our politics.

When the Senate Democrats post went viral, a lot of people reacted like: “Look what Trump is doing!”

When the context note said it happened in 2023 under Biden, many of those same people went quiet. Not everyone—but enough to show the pattern.

And that’s not just hypocrisy. It’s dangerous. Because it tells the system:

If you do cruelty under the right brand, it’s survivable.

Immigration detention in the United States has been cruel across administrations. Sometimes it’s loud and sadistic. Sometimes it’s bureaucratic and “procedural.” But the same human outcome appears again and again: people denied dignity, denied care, denied rights.

Sometimes the cruelty is men in masks with rifles.
Sometimes the cruelty is a clipboard and a shrug.

An 8-year-old girl with a 104.9 fever begging to breathe while an agent tells her she’s “fine” is not a partisan question. It’s a conscience question.

And the most damning part? CBS News reports Anadith’s family believes they were ignored because they are Afro-Honduran and Black. Her mother said:

“Everything they did to my family was discrimination.”

Whether or not the government admits discrimination, the lived reality Black migrants describe again and again is that their pain is doubted, minimized, mocked. It is not hard to see how that shows up here.

A child says she can’t breathe.
A mother begs for help.
A government agent responds with disbelief and contempt.

That’s not “policy.” That’s dehumanization.

The part that haunts me: virtually nobody talked about her in 2023

This is what I can’t shake.

Where was the viral outrage in 2023?

Where were the endless cable segments?

Where were the politicians using her name every day for weeks?

Where were the “This is America” speeches?

This sweet child died in government custody, after her parents say they begged for help and were refused, after officials later conceded she could have been saved—and the country moved on.

And here’s the ugly truth: part of why the story didn’t lodge in the national conscience is because it didn’t fit anyone’s political script at the time. It was inconvenient. It complicated the narrative. It forced people to admit that “our side” can preside over cruelty too.

So instead, it faded.

And that’s what I mean by selective outrage. Not just that people are hypocritical. But that victims become props. The attention isn’t actually about the child. It’s about the opponent.

But Anadith is not a prop.

She was a whole human being.

CBS reports her father said she dreamed of becoming a doctor. Her parents remember her jumping on the bed, eating popcorn, her desire to help others, her kisses and hugs, her “larger-than-life smile.”

And now she’s gone.

The lesson for this moment

If a person only gets public grief when their death can be blamed on the “right” villain, we are not a serious society.

If we can scream when we think it’s Trump, then go quiet when it’s Biden, we are training the government to keep doing evil—so long as it comes in a palatable package.

So here’s my line in the sand:

I will oppose Trump and Stephen Miller with everything in me.
And I will also refuse to pretend that Democratic administrations get a moral exemption on immigration cruelty.

Because justice is not a partisan instrument. Justice is a principle.

Anadith deserved that principle when she was alive.
She deserves it now.

What should have happened in 2023—and must happen now

An 8-year-old with sickle cell anemia and congenital heart disease should never be held for over a week in facilities designed for short-term processing.

A family should never be held beyond basic limits and then treated as an “operational drain” when a hospital trip is required. A child’s life is not an inconvenience.

And no agent should be allowed to speak to a suffering child the way Anadith was spoken to—without consequences.

CBS reports a district attorney in Cameron County launched a criminal probe into potential child neglect that could lead to possible prosecution. Good. Investigate. Prosecute where appropriate. And then fix the system so it can’t swallow another child.

But that only happens if we refuse selective outrage.

Because the machine relies on our short memory.

If this work matters, help keep it free

This is why I do what I do. Because stories like this get buried. Because children like Anadith get forgotten. Because both parties would rather you argue about branding than look straight at suffering.

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Did you know Anadith’s name before this week? If not, why do you think the country forgot her so quickly?

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

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