The White House called the video of an interaction between a migrant child abandoned in the Rio Grande Valley and a Border Patrol agent “heartbreaking.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked during Wednesday’s press briefing if President Joe Biden had seen the video of the 10-year-old Nicaraguan child who said he was left on a rural road near La Grulla, Texas. The boy approached a Border Patrol agent on April 1 and asked for help after the group he was traveling with separated from him.
“I don’t have any response from the president directly. What I can convey is, for any of us who have seen that video, it is heartbreaking,” Psaki said, adding that the video should be a warning about the difficulties of the journey.
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“It’s a reminder of how treacherous the journey is, and it is a reminder of how important and imperative it is that we put in place reforms to our immigration system, that we convey clearly how dangerous that journey is, and that we take steps like the Central American Minors Program to make it possible to apply” for asylum, she added.
The boy told the officer he had been asleep and that when he woke up, he realized the group had left him behind. The boy has since been placed in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Heartbreaking video shows a migrant boy abandoned at the border. @mattgutmanabc reports. https://t.co/zkObnhkkMT pic.twitter.com/kOiI6oRU8c
— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 7, 2021
There are more than 19,000 migrant children and teenagers in federal custody, preliminary data showed.
“On the morning of April 1, 2021, a Rio Grande City border patrol agent found a 10-year-old boy walking alone on a rural caliche road near La Grulla, Texas,” a spokesperson for CBP said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “The young child, from Nicaragua, was distraught and crying after awakening and realizing he was left behind by the group of migrants he was traveling with. The agent transported the child to a Border Patrol facility where he was fed and medically screened. As with all unaccompanied alien children the border patrol encounters, he will be safely transferred to the custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement.”
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“Scenes like these are all too common, as smugglers continue to abandon children in desolate areas, with zero regard for their well-being,” the statement continued.
There has been an increase in migrants coming across the border in recent months. Many opponents blame the influx on the immigration-related changes Biden made during the first days of his administration. Defenders note that the increase began during the end of the Trump administration.
