News/Commentary

Guatemalan brothers, 6 and 2, found near border with US-side contact info scrawled across shirts

September 22, 2022 | | Print Article

Heartbreaking scenes have sadly become the daily norm for Texas Border Patrol agents, but the image of two unaccompanied young Guatemalan brothers, ages 6 and 2, clasping hands and sporting t-shirts with the contact information of State-side relatives scrawled across them, is enough to break even the most hardened official.

The scribbled contact information is all the border agents have to go on to get the unidentified children to safety and, hopefully, to waiting family members.

The image grimly captures the plight of the youngest victims of the Biden administration’s open-door policy at the Southern border.

“Many of the unaccompanied children encountered by Border Patrol are very young and unable to provide names or phone numbers of family members,” a Border Patrol spokesperson said in a statement, according to the New York Post. “To locate a (child’s) next of kin, agents must rely on information written on articles of clothing or handwritten notes found among their property, adults within the group, and/or the consulate of their home country.”

The brothers were discovered by Border Patrol agents on Tuesday, along with six other unaccompanied children in a group of 18 illegal Guatemalan migrants. They were stopped near La Grulla, Texas.

Unaccompanied children such as these two are placed in the federal government’s care rather than immediately deported, The Post explains. With luck, family members currently in the States are located. If not, the children are ultimately returned to their home country.

So far, the policy has resulted in a staggering 140,186 unaccompanied minors finding their way to the border this year, according to Border Patrol statistics.

What’s more, there’s been a spike in would-be border jumpers who pose as minors to avoid deportation.

Since October of last year, nearly 700 adults were caught trying to pass themselves off as unaccompanied minors in El Paso, TX, alone, according to Border Patrol.

Meanwhile, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price defended the Biden administration’s efforts to get to the “root causes” of migration.


(Video: YouTube)

Speaking with Fox News’s Martha MacCallum on Wednesday, Price explained that, in the two years since President Joe Biden took office, there simply hasn’t been enough time to address those “root causes.”

“We have never been under any illusions, nor should anyone, that we can fully address the root causes overnight or over the course of a week or month,” Price stated. “But this is something that we are working on, we’re working on it as diligently as we can.”

His comments follow news that illegal crossings broke yet another record in August, bringing the total number of migrants who have entered the United States to 2 million so far in Fiscal Year 2022, according to a report from the Daily Mail.

“What we’re doing with countries throughout the region, with our partners in the U.S. Government to try to address the root causes of migration,” Price said. “The root factors that are pulling people away from their homes in places in central America, in South America, in the broader region that are, in some cases, bringing them to our border.”

“The State Department is working hard every day to try to address those pool factors, those root causes,” he insisted.

As for reports that the White House is “frustrated” with the amount of coverage Fox News has devoted to the escalating crisis at the border, Price declined to comment.

“I’m at the State Department,” he replied. “More importantly, I’m not a media critic. I will leave it to others to render judgment on media coverage.”

But as so-called “Border Czar” Vice President Kamala Harris and the State Department continue to dig for those root causes, people are continuing to die at our southern border as a result of the indefensible policies of this administration.

Just in September, 30 migrants have died along the border. For Fiscal Year 2022, the death toll has so far reached 782, easily beating Fiscal Year 2021’s record of more than 557 deaths.

Melissa Fine
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