The San Diego Border Patrol found two migrant toddlers abandoned on U.S. soil at the U.S.-Mexico border on April 6. Pictured are border agents comforting the two young ladies.
According to a news release from the U.S. Border Patrol (CBP), the San Diego Border Patrol in California found and rescued two young siblings abandoned after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on April 6.
CBP said that around 3 p.m. that day, on the U.S.-Mexico border in the Jacumba area of San Diego County, Border Patrol agents spotted a man and a woman with two young children on the Mexican side and saw the two adults place the children on a large boulder connected to a mountain at the end of a section of the border wall, allowing them to slide down the boulder and into U.S. territory.
When the Border Patrol agents got there, they saw no adults, only two children crying. They were a 6-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy, later learned to be siblings.
The border agents took the two children to the border post. There, they were given a medical checkup. The children and gave the border agent a note with the name and phone number of the children’s mother. The same message was written on the forearms of both children in ink pen.
The border agents contacted the children’s mother by phone and obtained more information. They will have the two children registered and will be turned over to the U.S. Department of Human Services and Health (HHS), which is responsible for admitting the influx of unaccompanied children into the United States.
“There is a lack of conscience in abandoning young children like this, and those human smugglers will be severely punished,” said Border Patrol Captain Officer Aaron Heitke, “and it is fortunate that our border agents rescued the siblings.”
This phenomenon of abandoning children at the U.S. border continues to occur.
In a video released by CBP on April 1, a man and accomplice put two children from the wall to the ground on the U.S. side of a section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence in the Santa Teresa, N.M., area. The border wall is 14 feet high, CBP said. The video shows the children were at least half the height of the wall from the ground when they were thrown down. The first child was thrown face down on the ground and it took a while before he got up, which was quite scary. After throwing the child, the two men immediately jumped off the wall, staying on the Mexican side and quickly ran away. CBP saw all this from the security camera and then sent border guards to take the two children to the hospital for examination. The two children, sisters, are 5 and 3 years old.
On April 7, CBP released another video from a week earlier. The video shows a boy approaching border agents alone in the desert area of the Texas border. He says to the border agent who comes forward, “Can you help me? I’m walking with a group of people, but they left me behind and I don’t know where they are.” The border agent asked him, “You are not with your parents?” He said, “No. I was with a group of people who were going to turn themselves in to you, but they left me and I came to get help. I didn’t know where to go, they might have kidnapped me.” CBP said the boy was 10 years old.
In a statement, CBP said, “Situations like this happen all too often, and traffickers often leave children in the desert.”
The videos have left many online feeling sad for these children, and have also sparked controversy about U.S. immigration policy, which the Biden administration has allowed unaccompanied child migrants to enter the U.S. Opponents argue that this U.S. government policy has released signals that are a major factor in creating the border crisis that has created a steady stream of unaccompanied children at the border.
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