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"Bring my son home," she told Univision on Thursday, by a translator. "I need to see him."
"They told us that they were doing everything they could to get it back, but we just want them to hurry," said Maria, Felipe's sister.
Before Felipe's father began their journey north, the family was struggling to make ends meet, according to the midwife who helped deliver the boy.
So his parents decided that Felipe should accompany him. "They agreed that he is taking their son," said midwife Maria Domingo Lopez on Thursday to the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre. "She understood the need for the father to leave because there are days when we do not eat, we find nothing."
The newspaper spoke to him in Yalambojoch, in the Guatemalan province of Huehuetenango. [19659003] The father had a loan he could not repay, which also contributed to the decision to leave, Felipe's uncle, Andres Gomez Perez told Prensa Libre.
There were not many opportunities to make a living in the green and hilly hills of Huehuetenango, the locals told the newspaper.
"Families are looking for ways to go forward.This father who left with his son, he was hoping to give his son a better education," said Lucas Perez, a village official .
On Monday, Felipe was taken to the hospital. He was diagnosed with a cold, he was released with drugs, and then brought back to the hospital. He died shortly before midnight at the Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center in Alamogordo, New Mexico, about 90 kilometers north of the El Paso, Texas, border crossing.
"The poor child could not hold up," said Domingo Lopez, the midwife.
The cause of death is not clear. An autopsy was scheduled for Wednesday in Albuquerque.
Second child died in CBP custody
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said this week that the death of a child in government custody "was deeply troubling and heartbreaking". She announced several policy changes regarding the government's treatment of migrant children and reiterated her call for "that parents do not put their children at risk by making a dangerous trip north."
On December 8, Jakelin Caal Maquin, who died in a hospital two days after being taken to a border patrol post. His body was returned to the Guatemalan indigenous community of Raxruha last weekend.
His family said he fled the country with his father, Nery Gilberto Caal, 29, looking for a better life. She survived 2,000 kilometers of northern Guatemala before dying less than 48 hours after being arrested by border patrol officers at a US-Mexico border crossing.
Prior to this month, there were six deaths in CBP custody in 2018, and none of them were children, DHS officials said.
Prior to the death of Jakelin, no child had died in the custody of CBP in more than ten years.
In the last two months alone, the Border Patrol has arrested 139,817 undocumented migrants on the southwestern border, compared with 74,946 in the same period of 2018, according to Nielsen.
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