HOUSTON – The Houston City Council session on Wednesday took time to address the situation surrounding Emmanuel Gonzalez Garcia, a 15-year-old boy with autism who has been in federal custody for more than a week.
The backstory:
On Oct. 4, Garcia went missing while selling fruit with his mother and sister in Spring Branch. His mother filed a missing person report that same day with Houston police.Â
When he was still not found nearly a week later, his mother and FIEL held a press conference on Oct. 10 to call for help locating the boy. A social worker assisting the family said he has the mindset of a 4 or 5-year-old.
Shortly after the press conference, the Houston Police Department notified the boy’s mother that he had been found safe. However, the boy ended up being placed with the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement. He still has not been returned to his family.
What they’re saying:
At Tuesday’s city council meeting, the mother begged city officials to help her bring her son home.Â
The family is undocumented. FIEL Houston, an immigrant-led organization, said HPD made a serious mistake in this situation.
“Instead of looking for the missing person report, instead of trying to find his mom, because Emmanuel is not an unaccompanied youth, his mom is right here,” said Cesar Espinosa, FIEL Houston.
Houston Police Chief address the situation
Timeline:
During a Houston City Council meeting on Wednesday, Mayor John Whitmire invited Police Chief J. Noe Diaz to address what happened from the department’s perspective.
HPD Chief Diaz provided a timeline of the events that began on Oct. 4.
Oct. 4
Officers were called about a missing juvenile in the 3900 block of Hollister Street in Houston on Oct. 4. At 8:51 p.m., HPD officers were dispatched, and at 8:56 p.m. units arrived at the location.
Emmanuel’s mother, Maria Garcia, told officers she last saw her son around 3 p.m. at the intersection of Clay Road and Hempstead Road.
“You can gauge the hours when she decided to call us,” said Chief Diaz.
Maria told officers that Emmanuel wandered off in the past and was recovered by HPD.
“The reportee made statements that Emmanuel did not take medication but was special needs and perhaps autistic. Because of this statement, the Missing Persons Unit deployed detectives from their homes to the actual location,” Chief Diaz said.
The chief says the mother provided a photo, which may have been from when the boy was 10 years old, and HPD created a missing persons flyer. He says officers posted the flyers and knocked on doors trying to find Emmanuel.
Around 10:30 p.m., Missing Persons detectives responded to the scene and took the lead on the investigation. They also searched for the boy and posted flyers.
According to the chief, investigators did research and found previous HPD reports involving Emmanuel, including one runaway report in 2024 and two missing persons reports from this year. Chief Diaz says these reports identified Emmanuel as not being autistic, and he was able to articulate himself well and clearly. Chief Diaz says Maria could not provide any medical records or documentation of a treating physician to confirm his diagnosis of special needs.
Oct. 5
On Sunday, Oct. 5 at 4:30 p.m.,10 miles away on Airline Drive, Houston police received a “meet the firefighter” call at a McDonald’s. Chief Diaz says a 15-year-old boy reportedly claimed to be homeless from another country with no parents or family in the area, and he could not provide contact information for anyone. The chief says the teen was able to communicate in Spanish.
“Officers worked for four hours. A supervisor, four patrol cars. We reviewed the body cam footage. These young men and women were pulling our general orders, our processes to make sure that they did it right,” Chief Diaz said.
The chief says because they couldn’t confirm the boy’s identity or find an acceptable person to leave him with, and exhausting all options, HPD called Child Protective Services.
“CPS told us, since the young man has told you that he has no parents here, we can’t hold someone that is not from here indefinitely,” the chief said.
CPS reportedly referred HPD to the Department of Health and Human Services or the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
“HPD patrol officers arrived at 4:43 p.m. and released the young man after hours, after fingerprinting, after giving him care, after talking through his processes, what we believed we needed to identify him. At 8:45 p.m., because of the federal situation, they didn’t have an acceptable means of transportation to take him to the facility. So HPD took him to the facility. At 8:45, he was released to the Office of Refugee Resettlement,” the chief said.
Oct. 10
On Oct. 10 at 10:27 a.m., Chief Diaz says HPD Juvenile Intake received a call from a representative for Emmanuel in the facility and an attorney for ORR. The chief says the attorney told Houston police Emmanuel did not want his mother to know where he was, so she did not notify her.
The Houston Police Department decided Maria should know and told her where Emmanuel was being cared for, the chief said.
Chief Diaz says a detective notified Maria that Emmanuel was with ORR, but Emmanuel had given HPD officers a different name, so it didn’t get a hit on any of their system.
The chief says this all happened around 11 a.m., when the press conference was in progress.Â
“Detectives notified the mother that Emmanuel was located shortly after their press conference. She was thankful, and detectives connected her to the Office of Refugee Resettlement,” Chief Diaz says.
According to Chief Diaz, neither HPD nor the ORR received a missing persons hit when they ran the name given by the missing juvenile.
While Emmanuel was at the ORR facility, he reportedly had a medical episode, and the medical staff at the facility made the decision he needed to go to the hospital to have an appendectomy. They took him to Texas Children’s to be cared for, Chief Diaz reported.
“Their status in this country is none of our responsibility at the Houston Police Department. We’re here to serve. No one at the Houston Police Department denied any services to the mother when she called initially,” he stated.
The Source: Information in this article has been gathered from the Houston CIty Council recorded session on Oct. 15.