Shop owner gets death threats over immigrant

Dozens of death threats have forced Francisco Gonzalez to conceal his face, carry a gun and move his 93-year-old mother to a safer location ever since police found a 15-year-old Honduran girl hiding in his auto repair shop after escaping from a South Florida detention center housing migrant children in Homestead.

Gonzalez told the Miami Herald he did not turn over the girl to authorities.

“Everybody thinks I called the police to come take the girl away,” the owner of the Gonzalez Auto Center told the newspaper. “That’s not true. The shelter people called 911. Police were already searching the area and came right into the shop.”

Homestead police records confirm they received a 911 call from the detention center staff Friday morning and that an anonymous tipster told officers the girl they were searching for may be inside the auto shop, the Herald reported.

“Now my elderly mom had to evacuate her home, and I have to walk in public with sunglasses and carry a firearm,” Gonzalez said in a story published Tuesday.

The teenager escaped from the neighboring Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children while being driven to a routine eye examination, on Friday. She jumped out of the vehicle, ran to the auto shop, and hid behind a large tool rack inside, according to the Washington Post that first reported the story.

Police set up a perimeter around the area and surveillance video showed officers checking the garage bays and offices inside the Gonzalez Auto Center, WSVN-Ch. 7 reported. The video also showed the teenager being taken away in handcuffs, which is police procedure.

Gonzalez said the crying girl hid in his shop for more than an hour claiming to be 19 and saying she was being chased by a man. Employees offered her food, water and help, unaware she was an escapee, he told the Herald.

Homestead police said

whoever reported the girl’s whereabouts were acting according to Florida law. Protecting the girl could have lead to an arrest and charges of obstruction of child custody, police said.

Gonzalez told the Miami Herald the FBI was investigating the death threats.

Comprehensive Health Services has a $30 million government contract to manage detention facilities like the one in Homestead, which is the second-largest shelter in the country.

The Department of Health and Human Services regulates these shelters but has yet to comment on Friday’s incident.