Honduran teen missing after walking out of migrant shelter in Texas, authorities say

A 15-year-old boy is missing after walking out of a migrant shelter in southern Texas, according to reports.

The teen, originally from Honduras, left the Casa de Padre shelter in Brownsville on Saturday afternoon, said Jeff Eller, a spokesperson from Southwest Key Programs, a non-profit that runs the facility.

The center, which has drawn much attention in recent weeks as the Trump administration enforced a policy separating adults and children who had crossed into the United States from Mexico, in located in a former Walmart store in Brownsville, a city on the border with Mexico in the far south of the state. It houses nearly 1,500 boys aged from 10 to 17.

Authorities told local TV station KGBT that the boy's disappearance was discovered during a welfare check, adding that the teen has been entered into a national database so he can be identified if located.

Brownsville Detective J.J. Treviño told CNN that police were called to the shelter, the largest migrant children's center in the U.S., on Sunday.

An official with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed with the station that a boy ran away, but could not verify what happened to him after that.

Eller told Fox News that workers at a facility cannot stop a child who wants to leave.

“We are not a detention center,” he said. “We talk to them and try to get them to stay. If they leave the property, we call law enforcement.”

Treviño told CNN that teams were called out, including personnel using a boat to search a nearby pond, but the teen wasn't found.

Later on Sunday, law enforcement sources told CNN and NBC News that the boy is in Mexico and headed back to Honduras.

WSBTV