The 10-year-old Nicaraguan boy has been reunited with his mother eight weeks after he was seen in a video crying to a U.S. Border Patrol agent for help.
Wilto Obregón, who was abandoned in the Texas desert after crossing the United States-Mexico border, left the Casa Padre shelter for migrant children in Brownsville, Texas. On Friday, he was transferred to the custody of his mother, Meylin Obregón, and her brother Misael Obregón – a reunion captured in a YouTube video.
‘I felt fortunate and very happy because it was not like all the other times I went and returned without him,’ Meylin Obregón told Telemundo. ‘On the other hand, today was a very special day for me because I no longer returned alone, I returned with my son. Today is the happiest moment of my life.’
Misael Obregón told the network that he expects his sister and nephew will soon travel to Miami, where they will live at his home during their asylum process.
‘I had friends there,’ Wilto said of the Texas shelter where he had been since April. ‘I was happy there, but now being with my mother is more joyful.’
Meylin Obregón hugs her 10-year-old son Wilto Obregón moments after he was released from a shelter for migrant children in Brownsville, Texas. The Nicaraguan boy had been staying at the facility since April after he had been found by an off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent while he was walking alone on a road in Texas.
Screen grab from a video recorded April 1 that showed Wilto Obregón crying and pleading to a Border Patrol agent for help. It spread throughout social media and highlighted the ongoing crisis at the United States-Mexico border.
Meylin Obregón escorts son Wilton Obregón to a car outside a shelter for migrants in Brownsville, Texas, on Friday
Footage of Wilto crying and pleading with the Border Patrol agent for help highlighted the ongoing crisis at the United States-Mexico border, which unraveled during former President Donald Trump’s last nine months in office and continued to spiral under President Joe Biden.
The Nicaraguan child was walking along a road east of Rio Grande City, Texas, when he was spotted by an off-duty Border Patrol agent.
‘I was coming with a group and they abandoned me and I do not know where they are at,’ the child told the agent in Spanish.
The Border agent asked the boy if he had been told ‘to come ask for help,’ but the child replied: ‘No, I am coming because if I did not, where am I going to go? Somebody could abduct me, kidnap me. I am scared.’
Misael Obregón previously told Univision that he funded the journey to the United States. But the trip turned sour when Meylin Obregón and Wilto were returned to Mexico after their illegal entry into Texas.
Immigration officials, however, allowed Misael Obregón’s 15-year-old twin sons, who also made the border crossing, to remain in their custody because they were traveling as unaccompanied minors. They were reunited April 6.
Wilto Obregón with his mother Meylin Obregón moments after they were finally reunited in Brownsville, Texas. The 10-year-old boy from Nicaragua was found by a U.S. Border Patrol agent while he was wandering alone on a road near the Texas desert area outside Rio Grande City on April 1
Meylin Obregón and Wilto were then kidnapped in Mexico by a local gang, who contacted Misael Obregón, requesting a $10,000 ransom for the mother and her son.
He was only able to secure the release of his nephew by paying $5,000, money borrowed from friends.
His sister eventually was released in mid-April, she then turned herself over to immigration officials at the United States-Mexico border and requested asylum. She was later transferred to a migrant shelter in Texas.
Lazaro Gutiérrez, who remained with the couple’s other son at home in Nicaragua asked the Nicaraguan government to petition the Biden administration to return Wilto. However, Gutiérrez relented after Meylin Obregón was released by the kidnappers and he recognized his son’s wish to stay with his mother in the U.S.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection monthly report released May 11 showed Border Patrol agents encountered 178,622 undocumented immigrants seeking to enter the United States in April, surpassing March’s total by 5,274.
The totals for April were more than 10 times that of April 2020, when 17,106 individuals were stopped by agents along the 1,954-mile southwestern border.
Border agents detained 17,171 unaccompanied children in the southwestern border region in April, down 9 percent from 18,890 in March when a record number of unaccompanied migrant children entered U.S. custody.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on May 13 and said the Biden administration made strides in seeing that that migrant minors were not being held at crowded CBP facilities, reducing the number from 5,700 in late March to less than 500.