A video showing smugglers lowering a 2-year-old girl, a 6-year-old boy, and their mother down by a rope over a 30-foot section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall last week has sent shock waves once again across the country.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), El Centro Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended a group of three adults and two children after human smugglers lowered them by rope down a 30-foot section of the border wall early Thursday morning.
The incident occurred at about 3:15 a.m., when camera operators assigned to the El Centro Station’s Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) observed a man being lowered down the border wall approximately three miles west of the Calexico West Port of Entry. RVSS camera operators then noticed another man being lowered, only this time they realized that a small child was clinging on to his back. Subsequently, a third adult, a woman, holding on to another child, was lowered by the smugglers.
#Danger ?USBP cameras capture the moment smugglers endanger 2 young lives. Watch as a 2yr old & 6yr old are lowered from the 30ft border wall becoming yet another example of how smugglers have no regard for human life. The children are now safe w/ mom.
✅https://t.co/MR9fEtCp7a pic.twitter.com/xQ28V7botL
— USBP Chief Patrol Agent Gregory K. Bovino (@USBPChiefELC) April 24, 2021
Agents took the group into custody. They were transported to the El Centro Station Processing Center for further processing.
“These heartless, greedy smugglers continue to endanger the lives of undocumented individuals for money,” said Chief Patrol Agent Gregory K. Bovino. “We were lucky that the mother and her two children, as well as the other two men, were not dropped from the 30-foot border wall. I implore those who are looking to hire these smugglers to consider the extreme dangers of crossing the border illegally into the United States.”
Agents determined that the two children and their 32-year-old mother were all undocumented individuals from Venezuela.
The two other adults, a 28-year-old man and a 31-year-old man, both undocumented individuals from Venezuela, had no relation to the mother and two children.