Video footage recorded by U.S. Border Patrol officer captured the heartbreaking moment a crying migrant child sought help after being abandoned near the Mexico-United States border in southern Texas.
With tears in his eyes, the migrant boy can be seen in the video walking towards the Border Patrol agent before he asked him if he could provide him assistance because he had been left stranded near the Rio Grande.
‘It’s that I was coming with a group and they abandoned me and I do not know where they are at,’ the child told the officer.
‘You do not know where they are at? They left you alone?’ the agent asked.
The distraught child, struggling to maintain his composure, apparently had been sent to the United States by his parents, who were not part of the migrant group who had already advanced further along the desert area.
‘At the end they abandoned me. I have come here to ask you for help,’ the frightened boy said.
A migrant boy, who was abandoned in southern Texas after crossing over from Mexico, was recorded on video in tears and asking a U.S. Border Patrol agent for help last Thursday. The child had spent the night in the desert after he was abandoned by the group of migrants he had crossed the border with and feared he would be ‘abducted.’ U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not released the child’s age or nationality
A U.S. Border Patrol agent traveling on a dirt road east of Rio Grande City found an abandoned migrant boy crying and asking for assistance last Thursday after he had been abandoned by a group of migrants that had illegally crossed the Mexico-United States
The Border Patrol agent then questioned the child if he had been instructed ‘to come ask for help,’ but the migrant boy replied, ‘no, I am coming because if I did not, where am I going to go? Somebody could abduct me, kidnap me. I am scared.’
The incident reportedly took place east of Rio Grande City on April 1 after the border agent had finished his shift, his friend Anjel Hernandez wrote on Facebook.
Univision reported that the child, whose age and nationality have not been made public by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, spent the entire night trekking through the Rio Grande Valley region after his unlawful entry into the country.
U.S. Border Patrol El Paso Sector chief Gloria Chavez told the network that parents should think about their children’s well-being each time they are sent alone to cross the perilous Mexico-United States border.
‘To all parents who are considering sending their unaccompanied children to the border, please reconsider that act because it is very dangerous to expose children,” Chavez said.
Human smuggling networks, who according to NBC News, have used public Facebook pages to hawk their services to Central American migrants have warned parents that their children would be guaranteed access across the Mexico-United States border if they travel alone.
The painful image of the child asking the Border Patrol officer was recorded just two days after U.S. Border Patrol released a surveillance video that showed human smugglers dropping two girls from Ecuador over a 14-foot high border wall in the New Mexico desert.
The sisters, aged three and five, were rescued by agents Tuesday and transferred to the Santa Teresa Border Patrol Station for medical evaluation.
Fox News obtained a photo Friday, that shows the girls interacting with Chavez, who handed them snacks at the processing center.
The sisters from Ecuador, who are aged three and five, were pictured interacting with El Paso Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez after being rescued
Official CBP figures show that apprehensions at the border have increased for 10 consecutive months, including the last nine of former President Donald Trump’s administration.
President Joe Biden’s administration has encountered a surge at the southern border over the last two months.
In February, CBP agents encountered 100,441 undocumented immigrants, including 9,457 unaccompanied migrant minors.
Government data shows that 171,000 migrants were caught by CBP at the United States-Mexico border in March, the highest monthly total in two decades. Border agents encountered at least 19,000 unaccompanied children.
The preliminary tallies for March are the highest since the agency reported more than 180,000 encounters with migrants in April 2000.
