VIDEO: Smugglers Leave 5-Year-Old Boy at Border

A gut-wrenching video shows a young 5-year-old boy begging “don’t leave” as he was abandoned at the Texas border. Sadly, the boy was begging human smugglers not to leave him alone after his parents did not pick him up. “Where are you going? …No, no no. Don’t leave” sobs the scared little boy holding a teddy bear.

Video of the traumatic interaction was caught on a cellphone video and obtained by Agence France-Presse (AFP). On the video, a man and a woman are seen “helping the young boy across the Rio Grande river but then leaving him by a barbed-wire wall at an underpass marking the border between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas, last Thursday” reports The New York Post.

The woman told AFP that the child’s parents live in the United States and the boy is from Mexico. Moments after the man and woman turn to walk away from the young boy, Border Patrol agents spot the child and pick him up.

The Post reports of another incident that occurred in April when another frightened boy found Border Patrol agents driving by and approached them. He said he had been left by smugglers in Texas. “I came with a group. They dumped me, and I don’t know where they are…they can rob me, kidnap me. I am afraid” the boy cries in Spanish.

The New York Post reports:

The heartbreaking videos come as the Biden administration still struggles to respond to the crisis at the border caused by unaccompanied children arriving alone.

According to statistics from US Customs and Border Protection, the number of encounters with children at the southern border has climbed 163 percent in the past year, from last March to this March.

The figures also show that Border Patrol agents detained 17,171 unaccompanied children in April, down from 18,960 in March.