Border Patrol Finds 8-Year-Old Boy Abandoned by Smugglers in Texas

Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector identified an unaccompanied minor who was apparently abandoned by family or human smugglers near the border. Officials were initially unable to identify the young boy who is unable to communicate because he only speaks a dialect they were unable to translate.

Agents assigned to the Weslaco Station found an eight-year-old boy on Monday after he had been smuggled into the U.S. The agents found the young boy along a river road after he had been illegally moved across the Rio Grande River from Mexico, according to Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector officials.

Officials said that field agents were unable to obtain basic biographical information from the abandoned child during their initial contact due to a language barrier. After transporting the boy to the RGV Centralized Processing Center, additional agents attempted to obtain information from the boy. These attempts also failed because of the language barrier, officials stated.

Border Patrol agents worked with foreign consulates to help identify the dialect and were finally able to confirm the boy is a Mexican national, Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Robert Rodriguez told Breitbart Texas in a phone interview Wednesday morning.

Agents found the boy in close proximity to a group of illegal immigrants who just crossed the border, a Border Patrol official told Breitbart Texas. He was not with the group–but was close by.

“The human smugglers will often release unaccompanied children after they cross the border and tell them to find the nearest Border Patrol agent they encounter,” he said.

“This was a very dangerous situation for this dangerous situation for him,” the official explained. Because of the dialect, Border Patrol officials suspect the boy may have been transported most or all of the way across Mexico. “Many of these dialects are spoken near Mexico’s southern border regions,” he said.

Officials said their goal now is to reunite the boy with his family and to determine if he experienced any kind of abuse along his journey. Mexican consulate officials are assisting Border Patrol agents in finding out additional information about the boy, his family and how he got to the Rio Grande River.