A 15-year-old boy being held in an immigrant shelter in Brownsville ran away and is now back in Mexico, reports CNN.
Police said they received a call around 4:30 p.m. that the boy had run away from Southwest Key Casa Padre, the largest migrant children’s center in the U.S., and was attempting to reunite with a man he called his father, a source told the news outlet.
"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," the program said per a CNN reporter. "We talk to them and try to get them to stay. If they leave the property, we call law enforcement."
The boy had been at the facility for 36 days, and was an unaccompanied and undocumented minor. Authorities at Southwest Key had been in contact with a man in Dallas who claimed to be the child’s father, but while attempting to reunite the pair, the source said it was discovered the man may have not really been the 15-year-old’s biological father. The boy then left the facility when authorities were trying to figure out his relationship to the man in Dallas.
The Dallas man later said the 15-year-old called him and said he crossed the river back into Mexico.
"I can tell you he's alive," the source said of the 15-year-old.
The average population of a Southwest Key Programs shelter jumped by nearly 300 after Attorney General Jeff Sessions in April announced the "zero-tolerance" border policy, said Martin Hinojosa, the program's director of compliance.