A four-year-old little girl from El Salvador was shot while trying to cross the border illegally with her mother, proving yet again that the Obama administration’s open border policy not only does little to halt illegal immigration, but actually encourages parents to risk the lives of their young children to come to the United States.
The little girl was shot by the human smugglers her mother was depending on to get the duo across the U.S.-Mexico border unlawfully. From the U.S. Customs and Border Protection press release:
Border Patrol agents assigned to the Weslaco Station rescued a woman and her four-year-old daughter Tuesday morning during the midnight hour. The woman told Border Patrol agents her daughter had been shot days earlier in Mexico by smugglers during a robbery.
The woman, from El Salvador, told agents she and her daughter were riding a train through Mexico to the United States when armed men boarded the stopped train. The armed men, believed to be part of the smuggling organization, ordered everyone to get off the train and assaulted several people while robbing them of their belongings.
According to the woman, one of the armed men hit a helpless man with his handgun which caused the gun to fire a bullet striking the four year old girl in the left shoulder. The terrified woman picked up her little girl and got back onto the train. The train conductor arrived shortly after the robbers fled and took the mother and child to a local hospital for treatment. At the hospital, doctors removed the bullet from the little girl’s body and released her from care.
Upon leaving the hospital, smugglers took the mother and daughter to a stash house in Mexico. According to the mother, the conditions in the house were deplorable. The house was crammed with people, many of them being young children. As her child was suffering from the gunshot wound, no medical assistance was available to her. There were no antibiotics, no sterile dressings, no pain medication and no sympathy from those she trusted to bring her and her daughter to the United States.
The mother told agents that the entire journey was horrible, she was treated like cargo, worse than animals. At one point during her journey and a stay in a cramped stash house, the mother was threatened by a caretaker. She was told that if her child did not stop crying she would be forced to “sleep outside with the dogs.” The woman said she saw other families and children traveling alone being treated worse than she and her daughter. Young girls were being forced to stay in rooms with strange men unrelated to them as a form of punishment for not keeping quiet.
The woman and her daughter continued their travel until they crossed the Rio Grande near Hidalgo, Texas and were rescued by Border Patrol agents. Shortly after being found, agents immediately took the mother and little girl to a local hospital for medical care where she was admitted into the Intensive Care Unit.
MRCTV reported earlier this month that border rescues and alien deaths have skyrocketed over the summer, with agents reporting more than double the number of rescues over the same time frame in FY2015. At least seven illegal aliens have reportedly died trying to cross the border unlawfully in the past two months.
While U.S. officials aren’t responsible for the individual decisions of Central American parents, there’s no doubt that the United States is complicit in this horrendous human smuggling ring. By continuing to enact a policy that encourages illegal immigration to the United States and ensuring that those who do make it are allowed to stay, the Obama administration has a definite hand in these stories, all under the false guise of compassion and humanitarianism.