A Salvadoran woman and her wounded 4-year-old daughter were rescued in south Texas shortly after midnight Tuesday. The child had been shot in Mexico four days earlier during a train robbery by smugglers.
The Salvadoran woman told U.S. Border Patrol agents she and her daughter were traveling through Mexico on a train when a group of armed men stopped it and ordered them off. The men were believed to be part of a smuggling organization, the woman told agents. The men assaulted several people during the robbery, information obtained by Breitbart Texas from the U.S. Border Patrol revealed.
The woman told agents that one of the men hit another man with his pistol. The handgun discharged, striking the 4-year-old girl. Fearing for her life, the woman grabbed the little girl and ran back onto the train. The robbers fled the scene. Shortly after this, the train’s conductor took the woman and the little girl to an area hospital where the child was treated for the gunshot wound. Doctor’s removed the bullet from the girl’s body and released her.
When she left the hospital, smugglers took her and her daughter to a stash house where they were kept in deplorable conditions, she said. She and her daughter were crammed into a small house with many people. Many of these people were young children, she explained.
The woman described her experience throughout the journey as horrible, agents said. She told them her child was suffering from the gunshot wound but “no medical assistance was available to her.” There were no antibiotics, sterile dressings or pain medication available for the child.
She said she had trusted these smugglers to safely bring her and her daughter to the United States but she received no sympathy from them.
The Salvadoran woman told the agents she was treated like cargo, “worse than animals,” she explained. One caretaker threatened her if her child did not stop crying. She was told she would be force to “sleep outside with the dogs.”
It has been reported by many that women are routinely sexually assaulted during these smuggling operations. This woman confirmed this stating that young girls were forced to stay in rooms with strange men who were unrelated to them as a form of punishment.
She and her daughter eventually made their way to the Texas border with Mexico where they were rescued by Border Patrol agents working near Hidalgo, Texas. They were immediately taken to a local hospital where the little girl was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit.
Chief Patrol Agent Manual Padilla Jr. addressed the dangers faced by these illegal immigrants during the human smuggling journeys.
“It’s heartbreaking to hear about a child being hurt by smugglers,” Padilla explained. “Smugglers have no regard for human life, and it is a travesty that migrants – innocent women and children put their trust into these people who see them as nothing more than a commodity to make money. We continue to warn migrants about the dangers human smugglers will put them in. Time and time again we see and hear about smugglers taking advantage of the most helpless people.”
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.