U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that a child was lost on January 18 while attempting to cross the Rio Grande from Mexico to Texas. A woman from Venezuela notified the Del Rio station Border Patrol agents that the river’s current swept her child away.
The agents initiated a search for the missing child and notified Mexican law enforcement. U.S. authorities could not locate the child, but Mexican authorities found a body matching the child’s description on the Rio Grande riverbank on Mexico’s side of the river.
The woman confirmed that the body was her seven-year-old daughter Victoria Lugo Mayor.
Border Patrol agents took the woman, 36-year-old Mayerlin Mayor from Maracaibo, Venezuela, into custody and processed her according to CBP guidelines.
According to NBC DFW, the agents released the woman and stated that she will have to make an appearance in court.
Victoria’s uncle, Guillermo Castillo, described the news of his niece’s death as “very painful… It’s a powerful blow to the family.”
Mayerlin Mayor, who worked as a teacher, and her daughter reportedly lived with Mayor’s parents but still struggled to make ends meet due to triple-digit inflation in their home country, NBC News said.
After a bus ride from Venezuela to Medellin, Colombia, Mayor and her daughter flew to Mexico. Then they allegedly met with smugglers and other migrants on Tuesday and attempted to cross the river.
Mexican authorities announced that beginning January 21, Venezuelan citizens will now be required to obtain a visa to enter Mexico.
This new policy is an effort by Mexican officials to slow the flow of Venezuelan citizens traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S. The law took effect three days after the child drowned in the Rio Grande.
For the past seventeen years, Brazilian citizens could enter Mexico without a visa, but that policy was changed on December 11 as a deterrent to the flow of migrants through the country.
The Biden Administration offered temporary legal residency last year for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans because of the political and economic crisis there.
However, according to Venezuelan activist and diplomatic representative Carlos Vecchio, around eighty thousand Venezuelan citizens illegally entered the U.S. in 2021, which is six times more than in 2020.
Vecchio stated, “This case of the girl lays bare the drama that Venezuelans who are forced to leave our country are living through. The painful thing is that the tragedy would be so great that they are capable of risking their lives.”