Video released Wednesday by a Border Patrol official showed smugglers dropping two young girls over a barrier and abandoning the pair of children.
Two smugglers were seen on the night-vision footage dumping the children, age 3 and 5, over the 14-foot fence under the cover of darkness, El Paso Sector Chief Gloria Chavez wrote in a tweet.
The two unidentified adults then ran up a hill on the opposite side of the barrier after tossing an object over the wall, leaving the children “miles from the nearest residence.”
Smugglers, under cover of night, scaled a 14 ft. border barrier and cruelly dropped 2 young children in the middle of the New Mexico desert. The girls, ages 3 & 5, were left miles from the nearest residence. Thank you STN Agents for rescuing these children! @CBP @CBPWestTexas pic.twitter.com/U91y2g8Lk1
— Gloria I. Chavez (@USBPChiefEPT) March 31, 2021
Law enforcement recovered the two girls, who were sisters from Ecuador, soon after the incident and rendered aid, agents said. The children were transported to a local hospital “for precautionary reasons and further evaluation,” and the pair was “medically cleared” before being placed in a temporary holding facility.
TEXAS RANGERS SAVE 6-MONTH-OLD BABY WHO WAS HURLED OUT OF RAFT BY BORDER ‘SMUGGLERS’
“I’m appalled by the way these smugglers viciously dropped innocent children from a 14-foot border barrier last night. If not for the vigilance of our Agents using mobile technology, these two tender-aged siblings would have been exposed to the harsh elements of desert environment for hours,” Chavez said in a statement. “We are currently working with our law enforcement partners in Mexico and attempting to identify these ruthless human smugglers so as to hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
The incident follows an announcement that the Texas Rangers, an elite law enforcement unit, rescued a 6-month-old infant after the child was hurled out of a boat by U.S.-Mexico Border smugglers into the Rio Grande River, a hotbed for illegal crossings. The child’s mother “had been assaulted by” the traffickers in Mexico, and she sustained a broken leg, the Texas Department of Public Safety wrote in a Facebook post.
Last week, a 9-year-old Mexican boy died after attempting to get across the Rio Grande into the United States. U.S. border officials disclosed Thursday that agents on a boat in Eagle Pass, Texas, discovered the boy, along with a Guatemalan woman and her 3-year-old child, stranded on a tiny island on the Mexican side of the river last Saturday. All three people were found unresponsive, and agents began administering first aid while taking them to shore. The mother and her 3-year-old regained consciousness, but the boy did not.
The Biden administration has faced bipartisan criticism for its handling of an unprecedented influx at the U.S.-Mexico border. Backlash has been primarily focused on the president’s efforts to contain a record surge of unaccompanied migrant children as experts estimate 117,000 solo minors will make their way into the country by the conclusion of the year.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Photographs have emerged from a crowded facility in Donna, Texas, where children appear to be packed into small spaces while donning emergency blankets. Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat who leaked the pictures, said the tents are dubbed “pods” and hold up to 260 people. However, one particular dormitory was home to 400 migrants at the time of the picture, he told Axios.
Most Democrats have refused to call the surge a “crisis,” instead terming the situation a “challenge” that arose from policies enacted by the Trump administration. Last week, President Joe Biden appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead efforts to address the uptick in migrants, including unaccompanied children, flocking to the U.S.-Mexico border.
