LAREDO, Texas – The dangers of illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border do not begin once people are caught.
Laredo’s Chief Patrol Agent Jesse Munoz said heat and the river are the biggest dangers.
“If you just look at the river, it might look calm,” Munoz said. “Then you start coming across, and you’re not a good swimmer, you come in danger of being taken away by current.”
U.S. Border Patrol uses drones with cameras and heat sensors to find migrants who might be struggling in the water or suffering from heat-related illnesses on land but are unable to get to help themselves.
“When they’re crossing, if they’re not able to make landfall, they tell us what is the last place we saw him go down, and we will go in there and we’ll try to recover the body,” Border Patrol agent Heriberto Espinoza said.
The technology to locate migrants crossing is evolving.
“A drone, as you can see, is operating at about 1,156 feet,” a drone operator said. “The agents have identified and located the subject in distress. And now, they’re rendering aid.”
Search and rescue teams also handle recovery operations due to crossing attempts.
“We’re going to recover either a body out of the water, evidence, a vehicle, narcotics,” Espinoza said.
“You don’t want to trust your life or the life of your loved ones to a smuggling organization,” Munoz said.
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