MISSION, Texas – An 11-year-old Salvadoran child who was part of a very large group of women and children that had just crossed the Rio Grande into Texas died from heat related complications. The smuggling action attempt took place in 100+ degree heat Thursday evening right under the Anzalduas International Bridge when more than 50 immigrants were caught by U.S. Border Patrol Agents.
This bridge area has been the scene of tens of thousands of illegal crossings by women, children and what the border patrol calls “incomplete family units” over past year and one-half.
“A Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue (BORSTAR) team was immediately deployed on Thursday after an encounter of an 11-year old boy from El Salvador suffering from heat-related injuries,” a prepared statement provided to Breitbart Texas by U. S. Border Patrol revealed. “The young boy was unresponsive at the scene and airlifted to a local hospital for further evaluation. Unfortunately shortly thereafter, he was pronounced dead.”
The increasing heat in South Texas during the summers worsens the already inhumane conditions that illegal immigrants are subjected to on their routes to the border.
“We continue to strongly discourage individuals from taking the dangerous journey to get to the United States. Children, especially, are easy prey for smugglers who have no regard for human life,” the statement from USBP emphasizes. “In the summer months on the southern border the weather can rise to very high temperatures, which can quickly lead to dehydration or heat exhaustion.”
For the past two years the Gulf Cartel in Mexico has taken advantage of a shift in immigration routes that led to an influx of Central American immigrants. This shift overwhelmed the capabilities of law enforcement agencies at the border. Due to the large number of immigrants, immigration authorities ran out of detention rooms and began to release most of them with a notice to appear in court. The move just helped further increase the flow of immigrants.
While the issue was largely ignored by the media in the past, during the summer of 2014, Breitbart Texas leaked a series of photographs that showed dozens of children crammed into small rooms showing the size of the immigration crisis.
It was during that crisis that the Gulf Cartel made $38 million in just months by controlling the traffic of illegal immigrants into Texas. One of the strategies was to tie up agents with groups of women and children while narcotics or other items were crossed at a separate point.
In recent months, border patrol agents have once again begun to apprehend large groups of immigrants in the Rio Grande Valley, Breitbart Texas reported. While the USBP officials have stated in the past that the numbers of apprehensions are not at the levels that they were last year, officials with the National Border Patrol Council, which is the union that represents agents, have stated that the recent rash of large groups could be the start of another wave.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
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