Casa Padre reported the boy missing on Saturday afternoon, and police sent out search teams, but were unable to locate him.
A source told CNN that the boy crossed the border by himself and had been in the facility for 36 days. Before he left authorities were in contact with a man in Dallas who claimed to be his father, but there were discrepancies in a DNA test. The “father” said the boy called him on Sunday afternoon and said he was back in Mexico. The man said he gave him money for his trip back to Honduras. “I can tell you he’s alive,” the source said of the teen.
Southwest Key Programs — which runs 26 other shelters in Texas, Arizona, and California and received $458 million from the federal government in the current fiscal year — said the boy left the facility on Saturday, and they couldn’t stop him.
“As a licensed child-care center, if a child attempts to leave any of our facilities, we cannot restrain them,” the statement said. “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.”
A source told NBC News that Southwest Key has cared for 19,849 children in this fiscal year, and 42 have left.