A teenage boy has gone missing after walking off the premises of a large migrant shelter in Texas on Saturday, according to the organization that runs the facility.
“As a licensed child care center, if a child attempts to leave any of our facilities, we cannot restrain them. We are not a detention center. We talk to them and try to get them to stay. If they leave the property, we call law enforcement,” Jeff Eller, a spokesperson for Southwest Key Programs, wrote to PEOPLE. “A 15-year-old boy left the Casa Padre child care center in Brownsville yesterday. We called local law enforcement and continue to work with them.”
TheNew York Timesreportsthat Eller said children have left their shelters for migrant children “from time to time,” but that the percentage who have walked off is less than 1 percent. According to the newspaper, the boy left around 3 p.m. and never returned.
TheTimesadds that the shelter houses 1,500 boys ranging in age from 10 to 17 years old, making it whatCNN reportsis the largest migrant children’s center in the U.S.
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A spokesperson with the Administration for Children and Familiestold CNNthat the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will not identify unaccompanied children and “will not comment on specific cases.”
Brownsville, Texas, Detective J.J. Treviño the news outlet that police officers were called to the location after the boy ran away.
The source says it was later learned that the man might not actually be his father, CNN reports. As authorities attempt to figure out their exact relationship, the child is said to be receiving money from the man to travel back to Honduras, according to the source.
Since May, PresidentDonald Trump‘s “zero tolerance policy” has resulted in 2,342 children being removed from their parents who crossed the Southern border and face prosecution for illegal entry. Amid aninternational backlash, Trump signed anexecutive orderreversing the position on Wednesday.
On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security said the U.S. government had reunited 522 migrant children who were separated from adults, adding in astatementoutlining the reunification process that the government “knows the location of all children in its custody and is working to reunite them with their families.”
While waiting for the parents to complete their deportation hearings, children will continue to be held in custody. The families will then either be reunited before getting deported or after the parent is released from detention and applies to be the child’s sponsor.
While Trump’s executive order said the government would maintain a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal entry into the country, a senior U.S. official told theWashington Poston Thursday thatBorder Patrol agentshave been told to stop referring parents with children for prosecution.
source: people.com
