Heartbreaking video shows moment 1-year-old boy is dumped at border
Heartbreaking video shows a smuggler abandoning a 1-year-old Guatemalan boy he’d just brought across the US border with Mexico.
The gut-wrenching moment was caught on surveillance cameras along the Mexico-Arizona border, with the “coyote,” or human smuggler, seen emerging from the Colorado River with the child in tow and no one else in sight.
After lifting the tot onto land, the smuggler sits the boy up just inches from the water’s edge before plunging back into the river to make his getaway.
The toddler can then be seen getting up and walking around the edge, dangerously close to falling into the water at any moment.
Luckily for the boy, a vigilant Border Patrol agent spotted him and sped over in his SUV patrol vehicle.
US Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz shared the harrowing event on Twitter, condemning the smuggler while praising the fast-acting agent.
“Thanks to our agent’s quick response, tragedy was averted,” Ortiz tweeted as he also shared a photo of the toddler now safe with the agent.
Since October, the start of the US Customs and Border Protection’s fiscal year, agents have encountered more than 58,000 unaccompanied minors.
In the Yuma and El Centro Border Patrol sectors alone, near the area where the smuggler abandoned the child, agents have encountered nearly 3,000 unaccompanied minors.
According to the agency’s latest data, there were more than 128,000 migrant crossings at the border in February, down from the record-high in December when the USCBP reported nearly 252,000 crossings.
Overall, the fiscal year 2023 is set to outpace last year’s record, which saw nearly 2.4 million illegal southern-border-crossing arrests.
The surge has led to Republicans repeatedly demanding that President Biden better secure the border.
Biden, 80, is reportedly thinking about bringing back the practice of detaining migrant families who cross the border illegally after he shut down the practice in 2021 amid pressure from Democrats.
The consideration of reimplementing family detentions comes as the Biden administration grapples with the looming end of Title 42, a Trump-era program that allowed authorities to swiftly deport migrants apprehended crossing the border.
