WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th June, 2021) US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released video footage on Tuesday showing a five-year-old migrant child abandoned on the United States' side of its border wall with Mexico this week.
"US Border Patrol (USBP), San Diego Sector agents encountered an unaccompanied 5-year-old child along the border wall, Monday morning," the CBP said in a press release. "Agents observed a small child being dropped off near the end of the border wall near San Ysidro, Calif[ornia]."
The release said the child is from Guatemala and informed agents that her parents are in the United States but she had no contact information for them. Moreover, the child said she has a seven-year-old cousin still in Mexico with an unknown man, the release said.
Immigration enforcement agents have been overwhelmed on the US southern border as hundreds of thousands of migrants have been flowing to the United States to request asylum, according to published reports.
Thousands of children are smuggled into the United States alone, without a parent or guardian, each month so that they are not turned away when apprehended at the border. Many asylum-seeking migrant families have been turned away at the border under a Trump-era policy known as Title 42 that authorizes US immigration enforcement to do so due to coronavirus concerns.
The United States currently has about 17,000 unaccompanied migrant children held in temporary Federal care facilities. The children are eventually released within several days to family members in the United States.
