Two children aged four and eighteen months were found alone in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert by border patrol officials.
The shocking discovery came on Friday not far from the US-Mexico border, according to John R Modlin, chief patrol agent of the US Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector.
Mr Modlin said the younger child was unresponsive and had to be revived after being left in the desert “to die”.
“This is cruelty,” he tweeted. “And it is gut-wrenching. I commend our agents for their quick response to this dreadful incident and to every incident in which migrant lives are at stake.”
A group of migrants had alerted border officials after spotting the two young children west of the Lukeville Port of Entry on the Organ Pipe Cactus Monument, ABC15 reported.
Mr Modlin continued by saying that people smugglers were at fault for the children being abandoned, and that he was thankful tragedy was averted.
“The children were 4 months and 18 months old,” he added. “Agents found the infant was unresponsive; thankfully, we were able to revive her and avert tragedy. The heartlessness of smugglers cannot be underestimated.”
The pair were taken to a hospital facility in Goodyear, Arizona, before being released back into the hands of Border Patrol, the local news report said, while an expedited placement has been requested with the Office of Refugee Resettlement to rehome the children in the US.
So far this year, multiple children have died while crossing the souther border, with two fatalities reported last week on the Rio Grande, according to ABC News, as well as others in March and June this year.
Undocumented migrant crossings into the US have declined slightly from an all-time high, that was reached in May, when 222,000 individuals were intercepted in a single month. A further 15,518 migrants were processed at official ports of entry along the border in the same month, CBS News reported.
The Tuscon Border Patrol has meanwhile seen a 12 per cent rise in unaccompanied children being smuggled into the US this year, compared to 2021, according to official figures.
