4-Year-Old Migrant Found Abandoned at Border in Texas

Border Patrol agents found an unaccompanied four-year-old girl traveling with a group of smuggled migrants in Texas near the Rio Grande border with Mexico. Officials report the father, living in the U.S., said the mother abandoned the little girl.

McAllen Station Border Patrol agents patrolling the Rio Grande near Hidalgo, Texas, on November 16, encountered a group of 36 migrants who had just been rafted across the river into the United States, according to information obtained from Border Patrol officials.

The agents reported the group of 36 migrants consisted mostly of family units and Unaccompanied Alien Children. The agents attempted to match up all of the parents and children during initial processing. While carrying out the initial interviews, they determined a four-year-old girl to be traveling without a parent or guardian.

Officials report the little girl carried a hand-written note with contact information for a parent living in the United States. The child also had a phone number written on the inside of her coat. Agents and medical staff examined the little girl and determined she needed no medical assistance.

Border Patrol agents contacted the father of the child. He told officials the mother abandoned the child.

“If the mother left her child, and the father knew it, it was incumbent on him to go to where the child was and take care of her,” Andrew R. Arthur, an attorney writing for the Center for Immigration Studies wrote. “Now, he might have been as surprised as the Border Patrol agents in Hidalgo were to find out that the four-year-old girl was alone on the edge of America. If not, though, and if he knew that she was going to be smuggled to the United States by a criminal, he took an unforgivable risk.”

Arthur continued:

Here are the facts: Even the best, most humane smuggler is a criminal, who exposes his or her charges to unspeakable dangers. Most smugglers are not humane, though, and frankly care little for their migrants except as a payday. And some smugglers are rapacious villains, with their own perverse (and hidden) agenda. None is John Wayne.

The laws of the United States should not incentivize their crimes. They do, however, and expose the most vulnerable to the greatest dangers. I have no doubt that the authors of those laws had the purest of intentions. But they need to wake up to the consequences of their acts and remove the incentives for parents and smugglers. The Border Patrol may not be there to save the next four-year-old girl.

Officials report the girl was processed under guidelines for unaccompanied minors.