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‘Don’t go!’ pleads boy left alone at Mexican-US border
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico, May 29, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – “Don’t go!” a young boy clutching a teddy bear shrieked desperately across the Rio Grande to the woman who left him alone on the Mexican-US border during the night.
Under an almost full moon and with the river nearly dry, the conditions late on Thursday seemed near perfect to cross from Ciudad Juarez in Mexico to El Paso, Texas.
The child had arrived at the border with a couple and played happily until the woman took him to US soil and left him there alone, according to an AFP journalist at the scene.
Scared, he began to scream in despair.
“He’s five years old,” the woman whispered to the reporter, adding that the boy’s parents were already in the United States.
Hearing his cries, the woman briefly returned, but finally left him alone.
“Here, here! No, no! Don’t go, no!” shrieked the child, at times losing his voice due to the effort of making himself heard from the opposite river bank.
His screams attracted members of the US border patrol, who after a few brief questions put the boy into a truck and took him away.
The woman ignored questions about the nationality of the child, who seemed to have a Mexican accent.
Recently, hundreds of unaccompanied children have been crossing the border each day as part of an influx of migrants fleeing poverty and violence in their countries.
Migrants have sought to take advantage of a perceived easier treatment from President Joe Biden’s administration, which is allowing unaccompanied children to stay in the United States.
In April around 17,000 unaccompanied children were intercepted at the border, according to the US Customs and Border Protection.
In total more than 178,000 people were stopped trying to enter the United States without official immigration papers that month, many from Central America, it said.
BSS/AFP/MSY/0749 hrs