Not just detention: how border agents save the lives of illegal immigrants
10 in May, journalist Sylvia Foster-Frau and her colleague were on border patrols with border patrol agents when a message was heard on the radio in a car: a group of migrants crossed the Rio Grande.
What at first glance seemed to be a detention, eventually turned into saving illegal immigrants. The journalist told about her experience in a report for Houston Chronicle.
Next - from the first person.
Agents Brady Weikel and Brian Kemmett took us to the location mentioned in the report, a river located three miles (about 5 km) from where we were, so we could see for ourselves what was happening.
We expected to witness the usual illegal border crossing, which occurs dozens of times a day in this part of the US-Mexico border.
But instead, we witnessed a risky rescue operation.
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When a border guard car approached the river bank, my colleague Bob Owen, a photographer, and I heard shouts and jumped out of the car.
Four adults and five children tried to manage the inflatable children's pools in which they sat in the overflowing Rio Grande river. But homemade rafts overturned, and migrants floundering in the cold fast-moving water, trying to grab hold of something.
The border guards quickly oriented themselves and threw ropes with rescue devices into the river, calling for migrants to grab them. The 7-year-old boy struggled for a long time with the passage, and then shouted, and his head went under the water.
Four other migrants grabbed the ropes. The mother panicked her sons at the age of 2 and 4 years into the hands of agents.
Meanwhile, the current seven-year-old child farther into the river.
Agent Wikel jumped into the river and, holding onto the reed as a support, pulled the child out of the water.
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All nine immigrants were saved.
“I didn’t even have time to think. A woman had a child here, she lost him, and he was carried away by the water. I didn’t want to wait,” said Weikel, 40, who has a 7-year-old son of his own.
Weikel has worked in the Border Patrol for almost 19 for years and is the Assistant Chief Patrol Agent and Spokesperson for the Del Rio Sector. He did not plan for salvation that day. He just accompanied us to trip to Eagle Pass.
Weikel showed us the border patrol station and answered questions about the recent influx of families from Central America.
The river between the two international bridges connecting Eagle Pass and the Mexican city of Piedras Negras was the hot spot that immigrants used to cross the border.
The steep banks are lined with high wild reeds. Two giant bridges loom overhead. As the number of migrants has increased in recent months, which has led to weekly expectations on the bridges, many did not want to wait and crossed the river between these official ports of entry.
We saw evidence of these intersections along the banks of the river, they were littered with shoes of all sizes and other household items.
The Border Patrol Officers Union posted photos of the boy's rescue on social media to show that agents are actually doing much more than chasing and detaining migrants—they are also saving lives.
Over the past two months, agents have detained more than 200 000 migrants at the border of the United States and Mexico. In the Del Rio sector, a border patrol conducted 370 rescue operations in this fiscal year compared to 31 for the same period last year.
After all nine immigrants were pulled ashore, the mother of the two boys took them in their arms, and their loud cries subsided. For a moment, there was a sense of camaraderie and peace between migrants and agents.
“We're all human, we're all human, and we all want the same thing for our families. A better life, security, we are all looking for the same things. The problem is that among immigrants there are also criminals who do bad things. And part of our job is to determine who is who,” Weikel explained.
This group of migrants, mostly from Honduras, was lucky. They descended in daylight, and their pools overturned next to the American side of the river.
"It was scary. But it was not as shocking as one might think,” Weikel said.
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A day earlier, another group of migrants tried to cross the river in the dark. 10-month-old baby died. Three people still can not find.
One of those saved on Friday was a 17-year-old girl, thin, with long brown hair and a pink-purple backpack.
Trembling, she smiled at me and sat down next to a tree by the river. She then looked at the 7-year-old boy and helped him take off the yellow safety vest. Another immigrant came up and gave the boy dry clothes, which he took out of a plastic bag.
Border patrol boat approached the coast. Agents asked questions to migrants and recorded the answers.
— From Honduras?
- Who is your family?
- You are pregnant?
Finally, the agent said, "OK, get up."
He opened the door to the van, which will deliver migrants to the nearest border station. There they will be detained for several days, and then either placed in prison for a longer period, or they will be released pending hearings in an immigration court.
“I’ll turn on the heater,” the agent in the car said.
One of the migrants was shirtless. The other had no pants. Some were barefoot.
Coughing and shrinking, they got into the van, taking one last look at the river before the door closed.
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