A Nicaraguan boy who made headlines in April when he was filmed crying and begging a US Border Patrol agent for help after smugglers abandoned him has finally been reunited with family in Florida.
Cell phone video captured 10-year-old Wilto Obregón and his mother Meylin Obregón hugging relatives on Sunday at Miami International Airport after landing on a flight from Texas.
‘I am excited to be together and to be with my child,’ Meylin told Univision.
Meylin and Wilto will be staying with her brother Misael Obregón at his home in Miami while their asylum process is resolved in immigration court.
Misael Obregón with his nephew Wilto Obregón and his sister Meylin Obregón, who arrived in Miami on Sunday night. The 10-year-old boy and Meylin were kidnapped in March in Mexico. Wilto was freed after his uncle paid a $5,000 ransom and Meylin later released without any ransom being paid. The child made headlines April 1 when he was seen in a video crying to a U.S. Border Patrol agent for help after he had been abandoned by smugglers in Texas. He and his mother reunited in Texas on May 28
Misael Obregón (rear center) with his two sons (first and second from left to right), his nephew Wilto Obregón (front center), his sister Meylin Obregón (second to the right) and his girlfriend Yubelki Aragón (right)
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
The trip capped off the pair’s whirlwind voyage across the United States-Mexico border, which included both mother and son being kidnapped by an armed gang.
Misael previously told Univision he agreed in March to foot the expense of the dangerous trip so that Meylin could travel with her son and his two teenage boys without the children knowing that they were on their way to America.
While his two sons were permitted to remain in the United States as part of the Title 42 policy that President Joe Biden’s administration amended so that Border Patrol officers would not return unaccompanied minors back to their countries of origin, Meylin and Wilto were not as fortunate and were expelled to Mexico.
Misael was reunited with his children on April 6.
Once in Mexico, Meylin and Wilto were abducted, requiring Misael to borrow $5,000 to secure his nephew’s freedom while his sister remained in captivity.
Days following his release, Wilto was smuggled with a group of migrants but was left behind in the Texas desert area.
An off-duty Border Patrol agent came to the boy’s rescue after spotting him on the side of the road east of Rio Grande City, Texas, on April 1.
‘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 officer then asked the boy if he had instructed by smugglers to seek an immigration or law enforcement agent in the area for help, but Wilto 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.’
Meylin was eventually released by her captors in mid-April, and turned herself over to immigration officials at the United States-Mexico border where she requested asylum.
She was later transferred to a migrant shelter in Texas and was granted custody of her son, who had been staying at a shelter for unaccompanied minor.
Wilto Obregón and his mother Meylin Obregón were kidnapped in Mexico near the border with the United States after they were expelled by border officials in Texas
At one point Lazaro Gutiérrez, who remained with the former couple’s other son at home in Nicaragua, along with Nicaraguan government petitioned the Biden administration to return Wilto. However, Gutiérrez relented after Meylin was released by the kidnappers and he recognized his son’s wish to stay with his mother in the US.
US Customs and Borders Protection last monthly report, released May 11, showed that Border agents detained 17,171 unaccompanied children in the southwestern border region in April, down nine percent from 18,890 in March when a record number of unaccompanied migrant children entered US custody.
Overall, Border Patrol agents encountered 178,622 undocumented immigrants seeking to enter the United States in April, surpassing March’s total by 5,274.
A border southwestern border report for the month of May is scheduled to be released this week.
Wilto Obregón, a 10-year-old Nicaraguan national, was kidnapped in Mexico in March and freed after his uncle paid a $5,000 ransom. He was later smuggled across the Mexico-United States border, but was abandoned by smugglers in the Texas desert before a U.S. Border Patrol agent rescued him the morning of April 1
United States Vice President Kamala Harris and Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei met at the National Palace in Guatemala City on Monday to discuss the massive flow migrants from the Central America nation and its neighboring countries across the U.S.-Mexico border
The Biden administration said Monday it will be creating task force of prosecutors to combat human smuggling and corruption in Central America as US Vice President Kamala Harris visited Guatemala for talks with President Alejandro Giammattei.
The group will complement other US prosecutors who are working with counterparts in the ‘Northern Triangle’ countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to build cases against corrupt actors in the region, the statement said.
‘It is in our collective interest that we work together,’ Harris said at the start of a meeting with Giammattei.
The Guatemalan president urged the United States that going after drug trafficking organizations should also be a key component of tackling corruption.
Vice President Harris is scheduled to meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Tuesday.