A Guatemalan migrant who had passed a key hurdle in her bid to win asylum in the United States has died in U.S. custody after a gallbladder operation, the Guatemalan government said on Monday. Maria Ochoa, 22, from the poor San Marcos region near Guatemala’s border with Mexico, died on Sunday in a hospital in Houston, Texas, months after she was detained at the border by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in September. Ochoa, whose two brothers live in the United States, had an operation on her gallbladder in the neighboring state of Oklahoma on Feb. 7 and spent a week in hospital afterwards, Guatemala’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
