TRAGIC: Border
Patrol Rescues 6-Year-Old Boy Abandoned By Immigrant Smugglers In The Arizona
Desert
ByEmily Zanotti
July 1, 2018
United States Customs and Border Patrol in Arizona
relayed a tragic tale on Twitter Sunday.
While on patrol Saturday afternoon, CBP agents came
across a tiny 6-year-old Costa Rican boy crouched on the side of the road,
clutching a dirty backpack. The child told Border Patrol
that his "uncle" — likely a smuggler or human trafficker — had
abandoned him in the extreme heat.
"Agents discovered the child west of Lukeville,
Arizona and just north of the border, in temperatures over 100 degrees," a
CBP agent spokesperson said in an official press release. "The child told
agents he was dropped off by his uncle and that Border Patrol would pick him
up. He added that he was on his way to see his mother in the U.S."
The incident, Border Patrol says, highlights the dangers
child migrants face after being sent, usually alone, on a dangerous and illegal
journey across the U.S.-Mexico border — echoing the words of the president who said Saturday on Twitter
that the lack of border enforcement during the Obama Administration encouraged
an increase in risky behavior.
According to current estimates from Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, of the approximately 13,000 children in Border Patrol
custody, around 11,000 are unaccompanied minors, sent from their homes in
Mexico and Central America where their families are threatened by drug lords
and crime bosses, and left in the care of unscrupulous "coyotes" who
can earn as much as $4,000 per smuggled person.
Border Patrol says the child was found in "good
condition" and was transported to an area hospital for treatment.
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