A human smuggler and a migrant mother endangered the life of a newborn by engaging in a police pursuit 80 miles from the Texas-Mexico border. The smuggler fled after attempting to sneak through the Falfurrias Border Patrol Checkpoint.
Falfurrias Station Border Patrol agent assigned to the immigration checkpoint on U.S. Highway 281 observed a Chevrolet Blazer approaching for inspection late last week, according to information obtained from Border Patrol officials. The agents referred the U.S. citizen driver to the secondary inspection area.
The driver failed to stop at the secondary inspection station and led Border Patrol agents and Texas DPS troopers on a short vehicle pursuit. Inside the vehicle, police found a migrant woman and her newborn child. The child was not restrained inside the vehicle during the pursuit, according to Rio Grande Valley Sector Acting Chief Patrol Agent Joel Martinez.
Police arrested the driver and turned him over to the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office for state charges related to human smuggling and fleeing from police. The mother and the infant were processed by Border Patrol agents with no apparent consequence of the child endangerment.
Elsewhere in the sector, Fort Brown Station agents responded to a call for assistance from South Padre Island police officers. The officers found a group of suspected migrants following a police pursuit. The agents found three migrants illegally present in the U.S. One of the migrants, a female, required transportation to a local hospital for dehydration and heat exhaustion. The driver now faces state human smuggling charges.
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