The Guatemalan Foreign Ministry will take charge of returning the body of the eight-year-old boy who died in the custody of US border officials earlier this week to his family, the ministry's spokeswoman, Marta Larra, told Sputnik on Thursday.
MONTEVIDEO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th December, 2018) The Guatemalan Foreign Ministry will take charge of returning the body of the eight-year-old boy who died in the custody of US border officials earlier this week to his family, the ministry's spokeswoman, Marta Larra, told Sputnik on Thursday.
Ministry officials contacted the mother of Felix Gomez, who died on Tuesday after being detained in Alamogordo, New Mexico along with his father over an illegal attempt to enter the United States, "to offer their condolences," with the mother responding with a request that her son's body be returned, Larra said.
The spokeswoman said the repatriation of mortal remains was part of a "standard protocol ... with all expenses covered by the Foreign Ministry."
No specific date for transferring the body has been set yet since the autopsy results had to waited on first, the spokeswoman added.
Felipe Gomez was the second child to have died in US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody this month. On December 8, a seven year-old Guatemalan girl died two days after she was apprehended together with her father for illegally entering the United States.
US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said on Wednesday that she would travel to the US-Mexico border later this week to check first-hand the medical screenings and conditions at Border Patrol stations in light of the little boy's death.
