Several instances of human smugglers abandoning migrants attempting to illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border have been reported in recent weeks by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (USCPB) officials and others.
“Del Rio Agents and Eagle Pass Fire Dept rescued 140 migrants abandoned by smugglers from an island in the Rio Grande River,” USBC Chief Raul Ortiz posted on Twitter April 4. “The teams took over 20 trips to safely rescue the migrants as water levels rose. Great job in getting them to safety!”
USBC released a statement the same day, confirming its agents in the Del Rio, Texas sector rescued 140 migrants stranded on an island in U.S. side of the Rio Grande River who had been attempting to illegally enter the U.S. from Mexico.
"The group consisted of one Cuban, four Nicaraguans, 66 Colombians, six Dominicans, 32 Peruvians, eight Ecuadorians, seven Hondurans, five Venezuelans, seven from China, and four from Sri Lanka," USBC reports in the news release, including 45 single males, 25 single females, 64 family units, and six unaccompanied children. None of the migrants needed medical assistance, according to the release.
Mexican authorities on March 6 found a group of 343 migrants, including 103 unaccompanied minors, in a freight truck container on the side of a highway in Veracruz along a route often used by smugglers, the Associated Press reported. The unharmed migrants were found in a trailer outfitted with fans and roof ventilation ports and the migrants wore color-coded bracelets to apparently identify them as clients of particular migrant strugglers, according to the AP report.
Ilias Chatzis, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling, addressed in the incident in a March 10 tweet, which linked to a Reuters report on the incident.
“Smugglers are criminals and people die in their hands,” he wrote. “These migrants were lucky to be found in time, others have not.”
In June 2022, more than 50 migrants died in a tractor trailer in San Antonio after being abandoned in the heat, in what was the deadliest smuggling case in U.S. history. The migrants paid their own way to cross into the U.S., CNN reported.
More than 850 migrants died along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022, a record high. The number of migrant deaths has risen for two straight years, above the previous record of 500 deaths recorded in 2021.
The death tolls don't include migrants who died while attempting to reach the U.S. border, as the U.S. only counts those who died on U.S. soil. There were reportedly 1.7 million encounters at the border in 2021 and a record 2.3 million in 2022.
