A severely dehydrated illegal alien called 911 pleading to be rescued after becoming lost in the desert near the Arizona border with Mexico. Human smugglers apparently abandoned the man and left him to die.
Border Patrol agents from the Tucson Sector, including a Border Patrol Search Trauma and Rescue (BORSTAR) team, saved the Mexican national. The man was struggling to maintain consciousness when agents found him.
The foreign national called 911 and told dispatchers he was lost in the desert, according to information obtained by Breitbart Texas from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials.
The Pima County-Ajo Dispatch notified Border Patrol agents after officials determined that the 911 caller was in a remote area west of Sells, Arizona. Sells is in Pima County. The remote community is located in teh Tohono O’Odham Nation Reservation which borders the state of Sonora, Mexico. The caller provided enough information to dispatchers for them to determine his general location.
Border Patrol agents found the man struggling for his life. BORSTAR agents responded with their emergency medical training, giving him immediate help. Agents called a Life Flight evacuation helicopter for transport. Life Flight flew the illegal migrant flown to a Tuscon hospital for treatment.
A statement obtained by Breitbart Texas from CBP officials said the Mexican national would be processed for immigration-related violations after being released from the hospital.
The release from CBP notes:
Unscrupulous smugglers often abandon migrants in the desert who fall behind. As a result, many perish every year. Border Patrol officials encourage anyone in distress to call 911 or activate a rescue beacon before becoming a casualty. In the fiscal year 2016 Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents rescued over 1,400 persons with many of those rescues conducted in the western Arizona region.
Breitbart Texas follows the plight of those left to die by human smugglers, including children.
In mid-March, this writer reported Border Patrol agents assigned to the El Centro Sector found a four-year-old girl who had been abandoned by smugglers. The agents observed a group of illegal immigrants trying to cross the International Border illegally near Mount Signal. One of the individuals fled back into Mexico, and another jumped into a vehicle and absconded leaving the little girl alone. Officials later determined that the four-year-old to be a Guatemalan citizen.
Parents who turn their children over to callous cartel-connected human smugglers are risking the lives of their children, agents with CBP have warned. In order to escape, these traffickers will frequently abandon a child in a dangerous place to distract Border Patrol agents.
If a person being smuggled falls behind for any reason, such as dehydration, injury, or exhaustion, the coyotes will simply leave them behind to die in the desert.
Often times, the deaths of these migrants place financial hardship on small border counties near and along the U.S.-Mexico border. These communities often bear the cost of having to dispose of human remains of illegal immigrants left by these callous human smugglers. Breitbart Texas reported that Brooks County, Texas, saw an increase in 2016 in the numbers of deaths of these aliens.
“Finding the remains of 55 humans in this county of about 15,000 people is overwhelming for a sheriff’s office with seven deputies,” then Sheriff-elect Benny Martinez told Breitbart Texas. “When a deceased immigrant is found, our office is tasked with recovering the remains, identifying the victim, and burying the remains. With our very limited resources, this is a daunting set of tasks.”
By year’s end, officials in the county had recovered the remains of 61 human smuggling victims. The area 80 miles north of the Texas-Mexico border has become known as the Brooks County killing fields.
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 and Facebook.