Photo: HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP/Getty Images
By: The opinion Posted Aug 21, 2023, 15:38 pm EDT
Mexican authorities reported this Monday that rescued a Honduran woman and her 4-month-old son at midnight on Sunday in the middle of the Rio Grande, on the northern border of Mexico, after being trapped on an islet while trying to cross into the United States.
According to the National Institute of Migration (INM), agents from the Beta Piedras Negras Group who helped the young mother and her little boy had to enter the Rio Grande in a point known as Railroad Bridge Island, near the buoys placed by Texas Governor Greg Abbottwhere they were stranded.
“The cold weather, the icy water and the strong currents forced the mother to hold her little son in her arms and go up to the islet where they were found,” the INM explained in a bulletin.
The authorities convinced the woman that she and her son were in danger and, after several minutes of dialogue, they managed to put a life jacket on her, the statement added.
After that, heThe agents transferred the young woman and the baby to the mainlandwhere they were later taken in an ambulance to the health services so that a paramedic could assess their state of health due to the risk of hypothermia, “since they were both wet and wore very light clothing.”
Upon verifying that they were in good health, INM personnel took them to a shelter in the city to provide them with assistance, shelter, and hot food.
The events occur in the midst of an upturn in the migratory flow through Mexico after the initial drop that caused the expiration last May of Title 42 of the United States, as recognized last week by the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Crossings of undocumented immigrants at the southern border of the United States increased more than 30% in July, according to preliminary data from the Office of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) obtained by The Washington Post, which dealt a blow to the new strategy. of President Biden’s immigration enforcement.
The Biden government attributed this increase to a “seasonal” trend and insisted that the immigration measures implemented to control migration have been “effective.”
Specific, 132,652 people were arrested while trying to cross the border with Mexico irregularly, according to the data provided by the official.
In recent weeks, reports of migrants dying while crossing the Rio Grande or appearing crowded in homes or buses on the highways have grown.
The United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that nearly 3,000 migrants have died crossing from Mexico to the United States. drowned in the Rio Grande or for lack of shelter, food or water.
It also happens while the controversy grows over the buoys and the wire fence that the Texas government has installed in a stretch of the Rio Grande to discourage migrants from crossing.
The growing findings of migrants in overcrowded conditions reflect the unprecedented migratory flow in the region, with more than 2.76 million undocumented migrants intercepted by the United States at the border with Mexico during fiscal year 2022.
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