Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol agents found a 13-year-old and his infant brother. Their mother abandoned the siblings in Mexico three weeks ago, officials report.
McAllen Station agents patrolling the Rio Grande near Hidalgo, Texas, on Saturday night came upon a group of migrants after smugglers moved them across the border river on a raft. Agents approached the area and took 17 illegal immigrants into custody, according to Rio Grande Valley Sector officials.
Sector Chief Patrol Agent Brian Hastings tweeted the group included a seven-month-old boy traveling with his 13-year-old brother. Hastings said the mother of the two boys abandoned the children in Mexico three weeks earlier.
Agents interviewed the older brother and identified the children as Honduran nationals. The 13-year-old boy presented their birth certificates to prove their relationship.
Officials reported that despite having been left in the hands of cartel-connected human smugglers for three weeks, the boys were in good health and required no medical treatment.
There have been multiple reports in recent weeks of small children being abandoned along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Border Patrol agents rescue four young children on the north bank of the Rio Grande. (Photo: U.S. Border Patrol/Rio Grande Valley Sector)
Just four days ago, Breitbart Texas reported that Del Rio Sector agents found two young children, a brother and sister, abandoned on a small island in the middle of the swiftly moving Rio Grande.
“The children were abandoned by smugglers, with no sign of their parents,” Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Austin Skero tweeted. “These merciless smugglers prey on desperation, forgoing all morals for financial gain.”
This appears to be a new tactic by Mexican cartel-connected smugglers. Four days ago, Breitbart Texas reported that Rio Grande Valley Sector agents in Brownsville, Texas, observed four small children walking along the Texas side of the Rio Grande.
Brownsville Station agents located the four shivering, wet children along the river after camera operators initially detected them.
The agents quickly placed the four children in a vehicle and turned up the heater. They then transported the abandoned children to the station for processing and medical screening.
Human smugglers marked a name and U.S. phone number on the shirt of a child left in custody of a non-family member. (Photo: U.S. Border Patrol/Rio Grande Valley Sector)
One day before that, Fort Brown Station agents found another child that human smugglers forced a woman to bring across the river. The woman was not related to or even from the same country as the three-year-old girl.
“No parent should place their children at the mercy of criminals,” Chief Hastings concluded in his tweet.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.