A 4-year-old girl abandoned by migrant smugglers has been rescued by US border agents after she was found sitting alone on a riverbank in Texas.
The little girl was found on the bank of the Rio Grande River, Customs and Border Protection said Tuesday.
Border Patrol said she had been carried across the US border by a smuggler and then left alone.
Her parents were nowhere to be found, authorities said.
It wasn’t immediately clear how long the girl had been sitting by the river.
“The child is now safe thanks to our agents,” Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens said alongside a photo of an agent cradling the girl.
It comes just weeks after another 4-year-old Nicaraguan child died when her mother accidentally dropped her while trying to cross the Rio Grande.
A little girl of similar age seen being lifted from the Rio Grande on March 7. Twitter / @USBPChiefDRT
Agents and members of the Texas Army National Guard light the path as asylum-seeking migrants wade through the Rio Grande River into the United States from Mexico, in Roma, Texas. REUTERS
Members of four separate migrant groups detained between March 18 and 21. Twitter / @USBPChiefDRTThe girl’s body washed up six days later.
The masses of illegal immigrants stopped along the southwestern US border shot up to nearly 165,000 last month, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
The number of unaccompanied children encountered at the border rose by 37 percent to more than 12,000 — even though the number of family units stopped last month decreased from 31,998 to 26,582.
