Five unaccompanied migrant girls were found Sunday near Texas’s southern border after being abandoned and left to face extremely hot temperatures, according to federal officials.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the girls, who range in age from 7 years old to 11 months, were discovered Sunday on a farm near the Rio Grande River.
Farm owner Katie Hobbs said her husband Jimmy called her around 8:30 a.m. on Sunday and sent her a picture of the five children he discovered on their property, according to KENS-TV. She said they found the girls abandoned on a blanket in the dirt, with the youngest crawling around without a diaper.
“They were crying, they were scared, they didn’t know where their parents were,” Hobbs said. “He thought one of them was dead.”
She said they gave the children water and snacks and called Border Patrol.
Hobbs, her husband and farm employees tried to calm the children, who Hobbs said seemed unable to tell them where they were from or who their parents were.
“They couldn’t say anything about their parents, or where they were, or where they had even really come from,” she said.
Border Patrol officials later said the girls aged 7, 3, and 2 were from Honduras, while the other two were from Guatemala.
“It is heartbreaking to find such small children fending for themselves in the middle of nowhere,” said Chief Border Patrol Agent Austin Skero II, according to KABC-TV. “Unfortunately this happens far too often now. If not for our community and law enforcement partners, these little girls could have faced the more than 100-degree temperatures with no help.”
Thankfully, the children were unharmed and did not require medical care. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will have custody of the children after being processed by Border Patrol, officials said in a news release obtained by KABC.
Take a good hard look at the #BidenBorderCrisis These young girls were found outside a ranch near Quemado, Texas in #TX23. The Del Rio Sector border patrol tell me they are uninjured, healthy, and in good spirits. ? @POTUS enough is enough let’s work together solve this crisis. pic.twitter.com/mt5P7ysN9g
— Tony Gonzales (@TonyGonzales4TX) May 9, 2021
According to the New York Post, Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas spoke to Jimmy Hobbs, who highlighted the scorching temperatures and reiterated that he and his wife gave the girls shelter and food while waiting for authorities to arrive. He said he thought the young girls would have died if he had not found them on his property when he did.
“I don’t think they would have made it if I hadn’t found them,” he told Gonzales, “because it got up to 103 yesterday.”
The farmer, who has lived in the area his entire life, said he’s “never” seen the situation at the border as bad as it currently stands.
“My thoughts are that it needs to stop right now. There are going to be thousands. This is just five miles of the Rio Grande,” Katie Hobbs told Gonzalez. “That’s a huge border. This is happening all up and down it. It can’t go on. It’s gonna be too hot. There’ll be a lot of deaths, a lot of suffering.”
The Biden administration’s reversing the border policies of former President Donald Trump has resulted in a surge of migrants coming from Mexico and other Central American countries to the U.S. border.
Central Americans looking for refuge from their home countries have likely seen the welcoming tone coming from the Biden administration as an invitation to cross the border.
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Even so, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in March that the situation at the border was not a crisis and that the problems they faced should be blamed on the Trump administration.
In March, President Biden called on Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the response to the flood of illegal immigrants at the southern border. So far, she has failed to travel to the border, but she did meet virtually with Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador last week and plans to visit Mexico and Guatemala in June, according to the Post.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.