Two migrant girls clutching handwritten notes were abandoned at the U.S. border by smugglers over the weekend, authorities said.
A 5-year-old and a 9-year-old child stranded from El Salvador were found by police in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Saturday, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Heartbreaking photos showed young children wearing black T-shirts waving papers with only phone numbers and addresses scrawled on them.
“Officers recovered two unaccompanied girls who were left behind by smugglers in Eagle Pass and fled back to Mexico,” said Texas State Police Lt. Chris Olivares. Said in X's post It's next to the image.
The girls left behind were later turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol.
Further details regarding their plight have not been disclosed.
The recent incident joins a growing list of cases in which unaccompanied migrant children are left behind at the border, often with phone numbers and addresses of relatives written on them or sewn onto their clothes. .
Footage of a 2-year-old immigrant girl, also from El Salvador, sparked widespread outrage last month after she told U.S. authorities that she came to the United States alone to find her parents.
The harrowing ordeal comes as more than 529,000 migrant children have entered the United States under the Biden administration, according to the latest data from Customs and Border Protection.
And a shocking report released in August found the government was unable to track down more than 320,000 migrant children who crossed the border without their parents.
