The injuries to 3-year-old Orlín Josué Hernandez Reyes’ body are so severe Latino community advocate Grace Resendez McCaffery is brought to tears when she thinks about what his mother will see when she is reunited with his remains.
McCaffery established a Go Fund Me to raise the estimated $12,000 needed to cover the costs and repatriate his body to Honduras where his mother, Wendy Hernandez Reyes, was deported in late January.
“I’m really worried about Orlín getting there and whether she chooses to see him, which I would think any mother would. I’m worried for her when she sees her baby,” McCaffery said. “The description the sheriff reported, I just can’t imagine anybody doing that to any human being, let alone a baby, a 3-year-old. I’m scared for her to have to see her child.”
Orlín died in Pensacola on March 4 from “horrendous injuries” sustained during what the medical examiner described as a month of repeated physical abuse.
The Escambia Sheriff’s Office says the child had 17 strikes on his head alone, along with multiple burns consistent with heating a lighter and pressing it against his skin.
Multiple ribs were broken. One was completely detached from his spine.
He suffered a transected pancreas, a severe injury where the pancreas is completely cut or torn in two.
Investigators say his collarbone was broken and there were signs of “possible sexual abuse.”
McCaffery says the Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet released his body, but once they do, she is working with the Honduran government to transport him there for burial.
As of March 16, they had raised approximately $5,000 of their $12,000 goal.
“They are very compassionate and making a way for us to be able to proceed and actually helping to reduce some of the costs,” McCaffery said, “but we still need some funds to cover transportation.”
What happened to Orlín Reyes?
Escambia County Sheriff’s investigators say the 3-year-old’s uncle, 28-year-old Samuel Antonio Maldonado Erazo, fatally abused him after his mother was deported and her brother-in-law became the child’s caregiver.
Hernandez Reyes lives in Pensacola but works in Alabama, and authorities say she and her sister when they were stopped on a highway.
Her immigration status is unknown, but both women were immediately taken into custody and officers gave them a moment to call about their children.
Hernandez Reyes told them they did but said she didn’t realize then she would be deported and the situation would be permanent.
The children were placed in Maldonado Erazo’s care.
U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said in a press release that Maldonado-Erazo’s wife, has been taken into custody, and their three children – two of whom are U.S. citizens – are in the custody of the Florida Department of Children and Families.
Maldonado Erazo is facing several charges including felony murder while engaged in aggravated child abuse and is being held without bond in the Escambia County Jail.
During a court hearing, an investigator testified Maldonado Erazo’s 6-year-old daughter said he “drinks every day” and will get angry and begin to hit her and his other two sons with “cords, wires, shoes and other items.”
The ICE press release said Maldonado Erazo is in the U.S. illegally and the agency lodged an immigration detainer against him.
The press release goes on to say that Orlín’s mother “abandoned the toddler” when she was deported.
“This crime is absolutely sickening,” said ICE Director Todd M. Lyons. “This little boy suffered extensively and died when his mother abandoned him to Maldonado-Erazo’s ‘care’ — and Maldonado-Erazo himself is an illegal alien who never should’ve been in this country in the first place. I encourage parents to self-deport with their children, but even if they choose not to do that, ICE gives them the opportunity to be removed with their kids. But despite that option, Reyes chose to leave her son here with a violent murderer who took his life.”
However, McCaffery said that’s not true.
She’s in contact with Wendy Hernandez Reyes who she said told her that during deportation proceedings she asked if she could take her child, a U.S. citizen born in Pensacola, but said her request was denied.
“I think we use the term separating families lightly because it’s become a common phrase,” McCaffery said, “but this is the reality of what it’s like for a child to lose their parents, and in this case, be left in the hands of a monster. They’re so vulnerable and it just doesn’t have to be this way.”
Children left behind
McCaffery, who runs the bilingual newspaper La Costa Latina and the Hispanic Resource Center of Northwest Florida and South Alabama, works as an advocate between the Hispanic community and various agencies including law enforcement.
She said over the last week alone she is aware of at least six children, of various ages, who were left behind after their parents were deported, including Orlín Reyes.
While his is a worst-case situation, she said many other children have similar stories.
“We’ve heard stories of children coming home from school and their parents being gone,” McCaffery said. “Some teenagers are having to fend for themselves, working and getting arrested as well. They don’t have parents to care for them anymore because of deportation. They are just left on their own with no one to really care for them.”
In June 2025, a 17-year-old boy from Honduras was taken into ICE custody in Pensacola after he was found in an abusive situation.
The boy was in state care after his mother was deported but he ran away from his foster home and was found living in a shed with no source of food, shelter or income, and was reportedly “not in good hands.”
McCaffery said some unaccompanied minors are sent to juvenile care centers.
Once they’re in the system, she said it can be difficult to keep track of them.
They found one teenager who was arrested in Alabama, after his work site was raided, at a juvenile center in South Florida.
“We make sure that they don’t disappear,” McCaffery said.
Clearing up misconceptions
McCaffery said she often gives presentations explaining about the immigration process and informing people of their legal rights.
One of the biggest misconceptions she said is what it means to be undocumented.
“People think that because someone is undocumented, it means that they crossed the border illegally, which is a misdemeanor, by the way, but people don’t understand what’s happening,” McCaffery said. “You’ve got people that were under protective status for many years, and those statuses are disappearing.”
Once that happens, she said it essentially cancels the legal process and people become part of the “arrestable population,” even though those individuals had been following immigration rules.
McCaffery said many people come to escape violence and economic hardship in countries where drug cartels rule and the labor market is so tight there are fights over jobs to clean toilets.
While some cross illegally, others do not, but in many cases, they’re all being detained and deported and legal processes are being ignored, she said.
“If we could spend billions of dollars on rounding people up, we could certainly spend that much money, possibly less, on creating a better system,” McCaffery said. “A system that could register people, that doesn’t necessarily have to make them citizens or give them benefits of any sort, but they could be identified and treated humanely and maybe put into a process.”
She hopes Orlín Reyes’ death is a wake-up call that leads to life-saving changes.
“The abandonment of these children. They’re being left behind,” McCaffery said. “I can’t stress enough the impact of family separation, the position that puts the children in. I don’t think anyone really thinks about that. Perhaps this case may actually open some eyes a little bit. I pray that it does.”
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: GoFundMe started to send body of murdered boy to mother in Honduras
Reporting by Mollye Barrows, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
