The father of an 8-year-old Guatemalan boy who died in U.S. custody took his son to the border after hearing rumors that parents and their children would be allowed to migrate to the United States and escape the poverty in their homeland, the boy's stepsister told The Associated Press.
Felipe Gomez Alonzo died Monday at a New Mexico hospital after suffering coughing, vomiting and fever, authorities said. It was the second such death this month. Another Guatemalan child, 7-year-old Jakelin Caal, died in U.S. custody on Dec. 8. Both deaths are under investigation.
"We heard rumors that they could pass (into the United States). They said they could pass with the children," said Catarina Gomez Lucas, the boy's 21-year-old stepsister, explaining why Felipe and his father, Agustin Gomez, made the dangerous journey.
CORRECTS AGE - This undated photo provided by Catarina Gomez on Thursday, Dec. 27, 2018, shows her half-brother Felipe Gomez Alonzo, 7, near Laguna Brava in Yalambojoch, Guatemala. Felipe died in U.S. custody at a New Mexico hospital on Christmas Eve after suffering a cough, vomiting and fever, authorities said. He was 8-years-old. The cause is under investigation. (Catarina Gomez via AP)
Gomez Lucas would not say who spread the rumors or who transported the father and son to the border from Yalambojoch in Huehuetenango province, a poor community of returnees from Mexico who had fled Guatemala in the bloodiest years of that country's 1960-1996 civil war. The stepsister spoke to the AP on Wednesday by telephone from Yalambojoch.
After hearing the rumors, Agustin Gomez thought he should take advantage of "the opportunity" to fulfill his son's dreams. He grabbed a few changes of clothing, bought the boy new shoes and left with what money he had, Gomez Lucas said.
Felipe "always wanted a bicycle," and in the U.S. he wouldn't have to endure the poverty and lack of opportunity in Guatemala, she said.
Felipe's mother, 31-year-old Catarina Alonzo Perez, said she spoke with her son the day before they arrived at the U.S. border.
"He wasn't sick on the way; he wasn't sick here," she said through her stepdaughter in the Mayan language known as Chuj.
Both Felipe and Jakelin came from rural communities in Guatemala with extreme poverty. Both were taken to the border by their parents and detained by the U.S. Border Patrol before they fell ill.
It appears Felipe got sick after authorities moved him from El Paso to Alamogordo, New Mexico, because of overcrowding.
"He was very happy to leave" on the voyage, said Gomez Lucas, so the family doesn't understand what happened to his health.
She said the family stopped hearing from Felipe's father on Dec. 18, when he and the boy were detained. On Dec. 25, he called to say the boy had died in a hospital.
"He told us that (Felipe) was fine all day, that he was playing with other children. But then he said he felt bad and his stomach ached," the stepsister said.
Felipe told his father he didn't know what was wrong with him and that it felt like something was stuck in his throat, Gomez Lucas said.
The father said Felipe asked him not to cry because he "was not going to get better," according to the boy's stepsister.
Felipe was taken to a hospital, and the father said he gave him to doctors, who soon informed him his son had died.
Agustin Gomez was drowning in debt, Gomez Lucas said. He sold a piece of land to survive, but the money was not enough, so he decided to take out a loan and travel to the United States.
Felipe is survived by five siblings, two from his father's first marriage and three from his stepmother and father.
The boy lived with his father's family in a small wooden house with earthen floors. It lacked access to basic services. Gomez Lucas said Felipe's father earned about $6 a day through temporary farm jobs or harvesting coffee, which was not enough to support the family.
As with Jakelin's family, Felipe's relatives now must deal with the death of a child, a debt and their continued worry about the fate of Agustin Gomez.
Oscar Padilla, the Guatemalan consul in Phoenix, confirmed that the father is still detained by the Border Patrol.
"My father is suffering because of the boy. We do not know what will happen. We have nothing to live with. We do not have money," Gomez Lucas said.
Federal immigration agents deployed to Minneapolis have used aggressive crowd-control tactics that have become a dominant concern in the aftermath of the deadly shooting of a woman in her car last week.
They have pointed rifles at demonstrators and deployed chemical irritants early in confrontations. They have broken vehicle windows and pulled occupants from cars. They have scuffled with protesters and shoved them to the ground.
The government says the actions are necessary to protect officers from violent attacks. The encounters in turn have riled up protesters even more, especially as videos of the incidents are shared widely on social media.
What is unfolding in Minneapolis reflects a broader shift in how the federal government is asserting its authority during protests, relying on immigration agents and investigators to perform crowd-management roles traditionally handled by local police who often have more training in public order tactics and de-escalating large crowds.
Experts warn the approach runs counter to de-escalation standards and risks turning volatile demonstrations into deadly encounters.
The confrontations come amid a major immigration enforcement surge ordered by the Trump administration in early December, which sent more than 2,000 officers from across the Department of Homeland Security into the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Many of the officers involved are typically tasked with arrests, deportations and criminal investigations, not managing volatile public demonstrations.
Tensions escalated after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman killed by an immigration agent last week, an incident federal officials have defended as self-defense after they say Good weaponized her vehicle.
The killing has intensified protests and scrutiny of the federal response.
On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota asked a federal judge to intervene, filing a lawsuit on behalf of six residents seeking an emergency injunction to limit how federal agents operate during protests, including restrictions on the use of chemical agents, the pointing of firearms at non-threatening individuals and interference with lawful video recording.
“There’s so much about what’s happening now that is not a traditional approach to immigration apprehensions,” said former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldaña.
Saldaña, who left the post at the beginning of 2017 as President Donald Trump's first term began, said she can't speak to how the agency currently trains its officers. When she was director, she said officers received training on how to interact with people who might be observing an apprehension or filming officers, but agents rarely had to deal with crowds or protests.
“This is different. You would hope that the agency would be responsive given the evolution of what’s happening — brought on, mind you, by the aggressive approach that has been taken coming from the top,” she said.
Ian Adams, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said the majority of crowd-management or protest training in policing happens at the local level — usually at larger police departments that have public order units.
“It’s highly unlikely that your typical ICE agent has a great deal of experience with public order tactics or control,” Adams said.
DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a written statement that ICE officer candidates receive extensive training over eight weeks in courses that include conflict management and de-escalation. She said many of the candidates are military veterans and about 85% have previous law enforcement experience.
“All ICE candidates are subject to months of rigorous training and selection at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where they are trained in everything from de-escalation tactics to firearms to driving training. Homeland Security Investigations candidates receive more than 100 days of specialized training," she said.
Ed Maguire, a criminology professor at Arizona State University, has written extensively about crowd-management and protest- related law enforcement training. He said while he hasn't seen the current training curriculum for ICE officers, he has reviewed recent training materials for federal officers and called it “horrifying.”
Maguire said what he's seeing in Minneapolis feels like a perfect storm for bad consequences.
“You can't even say this doesn't meet best practices. That's too high a bar. These don't seem to meet generally accepted practices,” he said.
“We’re seeing routinely substandard law enforcement practices that would just never be accepted at the local level,” he added. “Then there seems to be just an absence of standard accountability practices.”
Adams noted that police department practices have "evolved to understand that the sort of 1950s and 1960s instinct to meet every protest with force, has blowback effects that actually make the disorder worse.”
He said police departments now try to open communication with organizers, set boundaries and sometimes even show deference within reason. There's an understanding that inside of a crowd, using unnecessary force can have a domino effect that might cause escalation from protesters and from officers.
Despite training for officers responding to civil unrest dramatically shifting over the last four decades, there is no nationwide standard of best practices. For example, some departments bar officers from spraying pepper spray directly into the face of people exercising Constitutional speech. Others bar the use of tear gas or other chemical agents in residential neighborhoods.
Regardless of the specifics, experts recommend that departments have written policies they review regularly.
“Organizations and agencies aren’t always familiar with what their own policies are,” said Humberto Cardounel, senior director of training and technical assistance at the National Policing Institute.
“They go through it once in basic training then expect (officers) to know how to comport themselves two years later, five years later," he said. "We encourage them to understand and know their training, but also to simulate their training.”
Adams said part of the reason local officers are the best option for performing public order tasks is they have a compact with the community.
“I think at the heart of this is the challenge of calling what ICE is doing even policing,” he said.
"Police agencies have a relationship with their community that extends before and after any incidents. Officers know we will be here no matter what happens, and the community knows regardless of what happens today, these officers will be here tomorrow.”
Saldaña noted that both sides have increased their aggression.
“You cannot put yourself in front of an armed officer, you cannot put your hands on them certainly. That is impeding law enforcement actions,” she said.
“At this point, I’m getting concerned on both sides — the aggression from law enforcement and the increasingly aggressive behavior from protesters.”
Law enforcement officers at the scene of a reported shooting Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
Federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
People cover tear gas deployed by federal immigration officers outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
A man is pushed to the ground as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
A woman covers her face from tear gas as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
