The Biden Administration is facing increasing pressure over its border crisis. A video of Border Patrol agents encountering a little weeping boy abandoned at the U.S.-Mexico border has gone viral, sparking outrage.
Speaking through tears, the 10-year-old boy, who clearly still has his baby teeth, weeps as he looks up to the agent saying, “I was coming with a group. They left me thrown away, and I don’t know where they are.”
“They can steal me, kidnap me,” he said, according to Univision. “I’m afraid.”
Agents took the little boy to a Border Patrol station after he spent a night in the snake-infested desert full of wild animals.
Heartbreaking video shows a migrant boy abandoned at the border. @mattgutmanabc reports. https://t.co/zkObnhkkMT pic.twitter.com/kOiI6oRU8c
— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 7, 2021
Texas Border Patrol Sector Chief Gloria Chavez told Univision all parents “considering sending their unaccompanied children to the border” should “reconsider that act, because it is very dangerous to expose the children.”
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Customs and Border Protection is reportedly projecting as many as 184,000 unaccompanied children could attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2021, according to Fox News. Sources familiar with the estimates told the outlet they have “never seen anything like this before.”
The number of unaccompanied children is now 10 times higher than that under President Donald Trump who had been criticized by media and Democrats for his policies. One of those policies was to take children away from suspected smugglers or non-family members and place them in homes until relatives could be used or DNA testing could prove a family connection. The “separation” policy is credited, however, with saving the lives of children thought to have been sexually trafficked.
Critics of the Biden administration say those who supported the Democratic candidate are having a difficult time justifying their vote for what they assumed would be a more “humane” immigration policy. Videos like this one don’t help.
Heartbreaking video shows a migrant boy abandoned at the border. @mattgutmanabc reports. https://t.co/zkObnhkkMT pic.twitter.com/kOiI6oRU8c
— Good Morning America (@GMA) April 7, 2021
Documents shared with Axios in late March showed that President Joe Biden’s administration is projecting the number of kids crossing the border could increase from more than 16,000 to as many as 26,000 by September.
Initially, the Biden administration anticipated May would see 13,000 unaccompanied minors crossing the border. That number has since reportedly been amended to somewhere between 22,000 and 25,000.
News of these projections — as well as the abandoned boy — comes just a few days after horrific footage of smugglers dropping a toddler and her 5-year-old sister over a 14-foot border wall in the middle of New Mexico went viral on social media.
At the time, Chavez said agents are “currently working with our law enforcement partners in Mexico and attempting to identify these ruthless human smugglers so as to hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
San Diego Border Patrol Sector Chief Aaron Heitke said in a similar statement it is “unconscionable that anyone would abandon these small children, and those responsible for smuggling events like this will be aggressively prosecuted.”
–Wire services