An eight-year old Guatemalan boy, traveling with his wannabe-illegal immigrant father, died in Border Patrol custody as the two crossed illegally from Mexico into the New Mexico badlands.

It's the second child death for the month as migrants move to dangerous areas to cross over illegally. Yes, it's very sad. And lefties have had a field day, pinning the whole thing on the Border Patrol.

There's just one problem: The migrant child's father refused free medical care, courtesy of the Border Patrol.

That certainly messes up the narrative the left has put out there. Here's the lefties trying to make political hay from it:

Democratic lawmakers pushed back on Wednesday. Representative Nancy Pelosi, the speaker-designate of the House, deemed the death of two children in United States custody “unconscionable” and called on Congress to investigate. Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said, “There is no question that the system is not working.” Mr. Thompson said he would immediately call department officials to testify after he takes up the committee gavel in January.

Here's the New York Times headline, touting 'breaking point' and conveniently leaving off that the words were those of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen from its headline. Nielsen. after all, is someone whose words the Times pooh-poohs and buries otherwise:

Here is what she really said, well buried in the piece:

“Our system has been pushed to a breaking point by those who seek open borders,” she said. “Smugglers, traffickers, and their own parents put these minors at risk by embarking on the dangerous and arduous journey north.”

The aim of publicizing the death, of course, is to stop all Border Patrol apprehensions of illegals at the border. If a kid is apprehended, sick, and somehow dies (and it's a given that with 600,000 illegal border crossers each year, statistically some are going to die) the Border Patrol is always to blame.

The kid after all, was being used as a chit to avoid border detention, given the leftist yelling about separation of families at the border. That's the perverse incentive for bringing families and shipping unaccompanied youths over the border, who now account for 60% of apprehended illegal entries - the law says those people have to be let out after just a few days, and not await the consequences of their illegal border breaching in detention the way single crossers must do. Lefties can stand up and take a bow for that one.

But the issue here is not that the Border Patrol killed the kid, which is what the lefties had been trying to push as the new media narrative, and will probably keep trying to do, given their belief in the vote-rich potential of championing illegals. The problem is that the kid was sick, the kid was offered medical care, and according to the Border Patrol, the father said no. If I had to guess, it was quite possibly out of ignorance about the boy's grave condition (the guy was a peasant), and motivated by a desire to just get let out.

The Border Patrol didn't kill the kid, the father did, turning down free medical care for the kid.

Nielsen says the Border Patrol will start ignoring the wishes of parents now on the issue, and of course, that will raise new crocodile tears from the left about parental rights and "separations of families." Some sort of 'abuse' could happen, too. What the story shows is that the perverse incentives the left has set up to encourage illegal immigration with kids in tow is actually killing a certain number of kids, who don't fare well on dirty, extended, desert-badland journeys in high heat without water, and it's likely this one won't be the last. They yelled and yelled about 'family separations' and this is what it's leading to.

What's far more humane is a policy of sending all illegal border crossers back over the Mexican border for their own good. I imagine implementing such a policy would be impossible without some creative and progressive judge-proof legislation, but it would end the desert deaths the Border Patrol is constantly blamed for. For now, the news that the father refused medical care has left the open borders lobby with another dry hole.

Image credit: Screengrab from San Diego Union-Tribune, via YouTube