Google Maps(CNN) - The bodies of Oscar Alberto Martinez and his 23-month-old daughter, Angie Valeria, were returned home to their native El Salvador on Sunday, according to El Salvador's Secretary of Communications for the President, one week after they died trying to cross the US border.
Their bodies were discovered Monday near Matamoros, across the river from Brownsville, Texas.
The Secretary of Communications told CNN the Salvadoran Minister of Government and Development Mario Duran met the bodies on their arrival.
Martinez's wife and the child's mother, Tania Avalos, traveled to El Salvador on Friday and was greeted at the airport by El Salvador's Vice Minister of Foreign Relations Mauricio Cabrera.
Martinez's mother Rosa Ramrez told CNN affiliate Canal 33 that she had tried to convince the young family not to make the journey north, but "the idea of leaving had gotten into their heads."