Tearful 18-year-old migrant abandoned by smugglers in Texas desert: ‘I want to go home to my mother’
A Mexican teen who crossed the southern border with cartel smugglers was found desperate and crying out for his mother in a remote area of the Texas desert, where local authorities frequently recover bodies of migrants who didn’t make it on the journey through the harsh terrain.
The 18-year-old named Hector was abandoned by the group he was traveling with, required medical attention and was in tears when the Terrell County sheriff found him, according to News Nation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports,” which filmed the rescue.
“I want to go home to my mother,” the teen said through sobs in Spanish.
Hector said the group of 10 he was traveling with through the mountains left him after he was unable to keep up with them.
He’d been wandering alone for two days and found shelter in a rancher’s empty RV before finding a game camera where he showed himself and his Mexican passport, News Nation reported.
The action likely saved his life as Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland saw the footage and set out to find Hector.
The sheriff’s deputies have recovered 37 bodies of those not as lucky as Hector in just the past three years, according to Cleveland.
The number of deaths has drastically increased as the deputies would only see about one body a year on average before.
The teen had set up a flag out of pipes and a pillowcase to signal for help and was in poor shape by the time Cleveland and the news cameras arrived.
He was crying and needed medical attention.
Hector, who works as a mechanic, said he left his home country because a drug cartel was trying to forcibly recruit him.
“They threatened me in Tehuacan if I didn’t work for the narcos, because I was indebted to them,” he said. “So I focused on getting out of Tehuacan as soon as I could.”
The teen was trying to reach his father, who works as a roofer in Indianapolis and paid 50,000 Mexican pesos (equal to about $3,000US) to a coyote for help crossing the US border.
He owed another 50,000 pesos when he reached Indianapolis, he told the sheriff.
He told News Nation that he didn’t cross at an entry port, where he could ask for political asylum, because he planned to go back to Mexico to rescue his entire family — who are also under cartel threat — and bring them to the US.
Cleveland, who worked for the Border Patrol for 26 years before becoming sheriff, told the news station that he never saw anyone in as rough shape — physically and emotionally — as the Mexican teenager.
Hector was later treated for a muscular deterioration condition due to overexertion at a local hospital, the outlet reported.
He was released from the hospital Tuesday and sent back to Mexico.
