Immigration advocates on Tuesday pressed for the immediate release of the parents who lost their baby girl when their migrant boat capsized off the coast of Palm Beach County in May.

The reason: To bury their 8-month-old, Luana Augustin.

``They should be released to deal with the death of their little girl,'' Marleine Bastien, executive director of the Haitian Women of Miami, said at a news conference in Little Haiti. ``They've had nightmares every night.''

A spokeswoman from U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement said the agency uses prosecutorial discretion to release people on humanitarian grounds, but ICE in this case no longer has the parents in its custody. The parents are in the US Marshals Service's custody, she said.

Any additional information would need to come from the U.S. attorney's office, as this is a pending criminal matter, the spokeswoman said.

The U.S. attorney's office declined to comment, citing a pending criminal matter.

Luana was among at least nine migrants who died around May 13 when their boat -- carrying more than two dozen passengers -- overturned and sank off Boynton Beach. Sixteen survivors were pulled from the water.

Federal authorities later charged the boat's captain, Jimmy Metellus, and Jean Monique Nelson with alien smuggling resulting in death. Metellus told investigators he was hired by four men in the Bahamas and agreed to make the trip for free to escape hardships in Haiti.

The smugglers were allegedly paid thousands of dollars for the journey, which was supposed to go from Nassau to Bimini and then to Miami.

If convicted, the two men face up to life in prison, though prosecutors could choose to seek the death penalty.

Luana's parents, Chandeline Leonard and Lucsene Augustin, are being held at a jail in West Palm Beach, attorneys say. Luana's body, they note, is in the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's office, awaiting burial.

At the news conference Tuesday morning, Luana's family members conveyed the general anxiety they feel over not being able to achieve closure with a proper burial. Albert Noel, a cousin of Leonard, said he visited her two weeks ago.

``She doesn't eat -- she's so skinny,'' Noel, 59, of North Miami, said as he held up his pinkie.

In addition to calling for the parents' release, immigration advocates also renewed their call for some 30,000 Haitians in the United States to receive temporary protected status, or TPS. The status would allow undocumented Haitians to remain in the country temporarily with a work permit. The Obama administration is reviewing the possibility of granting TPS to Haitians, though the president said Monday that an immigration overhaul would have to wait until next year.

Former President Bill Clinton, the United Nations' special envoy to Haiti, brought up the TPS issue Sunday at a Haitian diaspora conference in Sunny Isles Beach. He urged his audience to keep the pressure on but do so respectfully.