Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents found the lifeless body of a seven-year-old Indian girl after other migrants reported her missing in the Arizona desert. The migrants also reported the girl’s mother and sister missing. Agents eventually found them safe.
“Our sympathies are with this little girl and her family,” Tucson Chief Patrol Agent Roy Villareal said in a written statement. “This is a senseless death driven by cartels who are profiting from putting lives at risk.”
Agents patrolling the border west of the Lukeville Port of Entry apprehended two women from India who had entered the U.S. illegally at the direction of human smugglers in Mexico. The callous smugglers dropped a group of Indian nationals just south of the border and ordered them to cross the border in this “dangerous and austere location,” according to information obtained from Tucson Sector Border Patrol officials.
The two Indian women told the agents that a woman and her two children became separated from them a few hours earlier. Agents began an immediate search of the remote and desolate location about seven miles west of Quitobaquito Springs, Arizona. Border Patrol agents solicited the assistance of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Air and Marine Operations (AMO) and Army National Guard helicopter crews to help prosecute the search and rescue operation. Within hours, deputies with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department found the body of the deceased seven-year-old girl. – read more