A child abandoned in the Rio Grande Valley asked a Border Patrol agent for help, video of the encounter showed.
The video of the encounter, which took place on April 1, showed the sobbing boy interacting with the agent after he said he had been separated from the group of migrants with whom he was traveling. The 10-year-old Nicaraguan boy was found alone on a rural road near La Grulla, Texas.
“It's that I was coming with a group and they abandoned me and I don't know where they're at,” the child told the officer in Spanish.
“You don't know where they're at? They left you alone?” the officer responded in Spanish, to which the boy said, “At the end, they abandoned me. I have come here to ask you for help.”
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The boy told the officer he had been asleep and that when he woke up, he realized the group had left him alone.
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."
"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 of the changes President Joe Biden made regarding immigration during the first days of his administration have assigned blame for the swell to those decisions. Defenders note that the increase began during the end of the Trump administration.
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Some migrants point to the change in White House policies, notably Biden's reversal of former President Donald Trump's policy of returning unaccompanied minors to Mexico, as the impetus for their journeys to the border.
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