Catarina Gomez via Associated Press
This Dec, 12, 2018 photo provided by Catarina Gomez on Thursday, Dec. 27, 2018, shows her half-brother Felipe Gomez Alonzo, 8, near her home in Yalambojoch, Guatemala.
- Catarina Alonzo, the mother of 8-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonzo, said her son wasn't ill on his journey to the United States.
- Felipe is the second child to die this month in Border Patrol custody.
- His mother's comments contradicted President Donald Trump's tweets on Saturday, which said the two children were already sick by the time they entered Border Patrol custody.
- The New Mexico medical examiner's office, which conducted an autopsy, said that Felipe tested positive for the flu.
The mother of a boy who died while in US custody says her son was healthy when he left Guatemala with his father on their journey hoping to migrate to the United States.
The mother of 8-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonzo, Catarina Alonzo, spoke Saturday with Associated Press journalists at the family's home in a remote Guatemalan village some 250 miles west of Guatemala City.
She said her son reported he was doing well every time that he and his father called home during their trek. She said the last time she spoke with Felipe he was in Mexico at the US border and said he was eating chicken.
US authorities say the boy was suffering from the flu when he died last Monday in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
He was the second child this month to die in US custody after crossing the border. The first was a seven-year-old Guatemalan girl, Jakelin Caal Maquin, who died in hospital roughly 24 hours after being arrested with her father and a large group of migrants in a remote area of the New Mexico desert.
Catarina Alonzo's comments contradicted remarks made earlier Saturday by President Donald Trump, who said the children had been sick before they were arrested by Border Patrol.
Read more: 'We've seen this coming': Why migrant children are dying in Border Patrol custody
Reuters/Jose Luis Gonzalez
A picture of Jakelin, a 7-year-old girl who died in U.S. custody after crossing illegally from Mexico to the U.S, is seen during a protest to demand justice for her, in El Paso, Texas, U.S. December 16, 2018.
Trump addressed the children's deaths for the first time Saturday afternoon in a series of tweets blaming Democratic lawmakers for US immigration laws.
"Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. They can't. If we had a Wall, they wouldn't even try!" he tweeted.
He continued: "The two … children in question were very sick before they were given over to Border Patrol."
The Customs and Border Protection agency has responded to the deaths by conducting secondary medical screenings on all children currently detained, and commissioning other federal agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and the US Coast Guard to assist.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen traveled to the US-Mexico border on Friday and Saturday to meet with Border Patrol officials, and be briefed on new procedures to conduct in-depth initial health exams.
- Read more of Business Insider's immigration coverage:
- 'We've seen this coming': Why migrant children are dying in Border Patrol custody
- Trump threatens to close the border over a new caravan forming in Honduras that reportedly isn't even headed for the US
- As the government shutdown over Trump's border wall rages, a journey along the entire 1,933-mile US-Mexico border shows the monumental task of securing it
- The 8-year-old migrant boy who died on Christmas Eve was held in US custody for nearly a week - against Border Patrol's own rules