A 10-year-old boy who crossed the U.S. border on Thanksgiving Day was rescued by Texas state troopers, only to be left behind by smugglers in the desolate territory.
The boy from El Salvador, with only a cell phone, was alone and lost when he entered Maverick County, Texas.
He tearfully told state troopers that he hoped his parents would get into the country quickly and trust Coyote to bring him to his family in the United States. Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Christopher Olivarez he said in an X post that shared a video of the child.
The area has become a hotspot for unaccompanied migrant children.
Just days ago, authorities in Texas discovered a 2-year-old girl who had crossed from El Salvador with 60 other unaccompanied children. A video interview of a toddler by a Texas state trooper who said his parents were also already in the United States went viral, sparking outrage over the border crisis.
“Many of us celebrate Thanksgiving with family and friends. Many children are in dire situations due to the open border situation and are unable to enjoy the holiday or see their families. “We must not forget that even more children trafficked across the southern border are exploited and exposed to dangerous criminal environments while traveling to the United States,” Olivarez said. He spoke about a recent heartbreaking incident.
More than 529,000 immigrant children have entered the United States under the Biden administration, according to federal data.
A shocking federal monitoring report released in August revealed that the federal government was unable to track down some 320,000 migrant children who made the harrowing journey to cross the border without their parents.
Once in the United States, Border Patrol agents place children into the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS is tasked with vetting sponsors in the United States.
Tara Lee Rodas, a whistleblower who worked under the HHS program, told the Post earlier this week that the federal agency only calls the child's placeholder to confirm the pregnancy. spoke.
“We're on the phone. … We haven't met this person in person,” she said of the alleged responsible caregiver on the other end.
“We do not do DNA testing. And then you hand those little kids over to someone in the United States and you give that kid a piece of paper and say, “This is where I'm going.'' So no one is questioning it,” Rodas said.
Rodas said some of these sponsors turned out to be gang members and sex and labor traffickers.
“This is a huge stain on our country,” she said.
Olivares called the trend “alarming” and said state officials “don't know exactly what happened to them during their journey and where they ended up.”
