The father of the 8-year-old Guatemalan boy who died in US custody over Christmas took his son to the border after hearing rumors that parents with kids are allowed to cross, family members say.

“We heard rumors that they could pass (into the United States). They said they could pass with the children,” said Catarina Gomez Lucas, the 21-year-old stepsister of dead youngster Felipe Gomez Alonzo.

The boy died Monday at a New Mexico hospital after suffering coughing, vomiting and fever while in Customs and Border Protection custody, authorities said. An autopsy later showed he had the flu, but his exact cause of death has not been determined.

After the rumors spread through their poor farming village of Yalambojoch, his dad, Agustin Gomez, decided to seize “the opportunity” to give his young son a better life and to repay his mounting debts, Gomez Lucas told news outlets.

Gomez Alonzo, a brainy kid who loved reading and soccer, he was excited to go to the US, where he could attend school, find a home for the family and get a bicycle, she said.

“It was his dream,” his stepsister told The Washington Post.

The dad, who earned around $5 a day as a farmworker, was already deeply in debt for unpaid bills and other expenses, and wound up owing more than $6,500 after paying a smuggler to bring him and his son to the US, the paper reports.

“He was going to work to repay the loan and give his son a better future,” Gomez Lucas added to CNN.

When they set off two weeks ago, Gomez Alonzo was in good health, and he stayed that way as they traveled through Mexico, according to his mom.

“He wasn’t sick on the way; he wasn’t sick here,” said his mother, Catarina Alonzo Perez, 31, who spoke with her son the day before they arrived at the US border.

The father and son were apprehended and detained in the US by Border Patrol about 3 miles from a port of of entry in El Paso, Texas, on Dec. 18, according to Customs and Border Protection.

He fell sick six days later and was taken to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a cold and a fever and prescribed amoxicillin and ibuprofen. He was released that afternoon but returned later the same day with nausea and vomiting and died there just after midnight, CBP said.

“My father started to cry,” Gomez Lucas told the Washington Post of her father’s reaction, adding that he said, “It can’t be. Don’t abandon me here. We have a dream to fulfill.”

The family is still hoping Agustin Gomez will be allowed to stay in the US and work with his brother in Virginia to pay off the debt.

“Otherwise, how will we live?” his wife told CNN.

Gomez Alonzo is the second Guatemalan migrant kid to die in US Border Patrol custody recently, after 7-year-old Jakelin Caal passed away on Dec. 8.

Both deaths are still under investigation.