Infant girl among four found dead in Rio Grande

A row of shipping containers and razor wire placed on the banks of the Rio Grande by Gov. Greg Abbott to form a makeshift border wall in Eagle Pass on Nov. 19, 2021. (Credit: Chris Stokes for The Texas Tribune)

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Four people, including an infant girl, drowned in the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass over the holiday weekend, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

DPS spokesperson Lt. Chris Olivarez wrote on Twitter on Monday that the department’s Tactical Marine Unit and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission deployed two airboats in response to a possible infant drowning. The department’s Tactical Marine Unit recovered the bodies of the infant and a female adult Saturday but found them to be unresponsive.

“TMU operators immediately performed chest compressions on the two,” Olivarez tweeted Monday. “Medical staff arrived on the scene and transported both to Fort Duncan Regional Medical Center, where both were pronounced deceased.”

State officials recovered four people floating in the river, including the two deceased. The two survivors were turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol. Neither DPS nor Customs and Border Protection would comment on Tuesday.

On Sunday and Monday, two more bodies — a male and female — were recovered from the river. Olivarez said their identities are unknown since neither had identification documents.

DPS troopers also found two young children from Guatemala on Monday who were alone in Eagle Pass. Olivarez said the children, 8 and 11, told troopers that a woman left them at the edge of the river in Mexico and instructed them to cross.

The Rio Grande is notoriously dangerous for migrants to use as a route into the U.S. Last September, nine migrants drowned while attempting to cross the border.

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