A 17-year-old boy living in a Safety Harbor shelter for unaccompanied migrant children died on Wednesday after being transferred to Mease Countryside Hospital, according to Bill Pellan, director of investigations for the District Six Medical Examiner Office.

Pellan said further details of the boy’s death could not be released due to the ongoing investigation. The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the active case and declined to release records.

A 17-year-old migrant child from Honduras who arrived in the U.S. without a parent or guardian has died in government custody in Florida, officials said Friday, in what is believed to be the first such death in years. 

Enrique Reina, the Honduran secretary of foreign affairs, identified the child as Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza and called for an "exhaustive investigation" into his death. Reina said the child was being held at a shelter used to house unaccompanied children in Safety Harbor, Florida, a small city west of Tampa.

The Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed the death of a migrant child in U.S. custody.

The department released a statement on Friday regarding the death of the child, but did not reveal where the child died.

"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is deeply saddened by this tragic loss and our heart goes out to the family, with whom we are in touch," it said.

Millions of people are leaving their homes across Latin America in numbers not seen in decades, many of them pressing toward the United States.

While migration to the U.S. southern border has always fluctuated, the pandemic and the recession that followed hit Latin America harder than almost anywhere else in the world, plunging millions into hunger, destitution and despair.

Thousands of migrants in Mexico have been clambering onto dangerous freight trains rumbling northward in a scramble to reach the U.S. border by the time the United States ends a tough migration policy later this week.

In recent weeks, up to several hundred people have boarded daily, activists and officials say, with many setting off atop train cars pulling out from a brief stopping point at a garbage dump in Huehuetoca, a town north of Mexico City.

For more than three years, the federal government has turned away migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, including those who are seeking asylum, using a public emergency health order known as Title 42. It was launched by the Trump administration at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and continued under the Biden administration.

Title 42 has been the subject of different court rulings, but as of now, the Biden administration is scheduled to lift the health order on May 11.

Here’s what you need to know about the law.

What is Title 42?

With Title 42’s expiration just days away, and a massive surge in migration expected to follow, the Biden administration is ramping up its tougher talk about the potential consequences of illegal entry to dissuade migrants from making the journey -- but so far they are not listening.

"Don't listen to smugglers' lies about America's immigration laws. The U.S. border is not open to illegal or irregular migration and U.S. immigration laws will be tougher as the Title 42 public health order ends," the Department of Homeland Security tweeted on Tuesday.

After more than three years, a controversial Trump-era immigration policy known as Title 42 is set to expire on 11 May.

Officials are bracing for an influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border when that happens.

On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden acknowledged that "it's going to be chaotic for a little while" when the policy is lifted.

The policy has long faced fierce criticism from immigration advocates and some Democrats who believed it prevented many asylum seekers from coming into the country.