By Rubén Pereida and Jorge Carrasco
"I had to be stronger, but the water beat me."
Araceli Franco can barely articulate a word.
Crying and screams of pain muffle her voice at times as she recalls her unsuccessful efforts to save her 9-year-old daughter, Magabi, as she drowned in the Rio Grande, on a fatal journey across the border from Mexico to USA.
“I tried in a thousand ways to swim and swim.
And I was able to swim, but I took her out dead, ”she says to Noticias Telemundo between laments.
"In a few moments it left me."
['Stay in Mexico' is over but the agonizing wait continues for thousands of immigrants]
Last Saturday, when Border Patrol officers found the Guatemalan migrant on an island in the river,
next to her lay Magabi and her three-year-old brother, Damien Alexander.
They were all unconscious
after being swept away by the current.
Officers rushed to revive them with first aid techniques.
The woman and her youngest son responded.
But the girl was declared dead shortly afterwards at a medical center of the Eagle Pass Fire Department, in Texas, according to a statement Thursday by the head of the Border Patrol in the Rio Grande sector, Austin L. Skero II.
"We are very sorry," recalls the woman the officers told her.
She and her son, who was in critical condition, were taken to San Antonio, Texas, for medical attention.
The tragedy of the Franco family, who traveled to the United States with the intention of reuniting with the father of the children - both of Mexican nationality - occurs at a time when the southern border is experiencing a dramatic increase in the flow of asylum seekers, on all unaccompanied minors.
President Joe Biden stressed Thursday that all migrant families arriving from Mexico are being returned and that they will only accept the entry of children who arrive unaccompanied.
"The only people we are not going to leave sitting across the Rio Grande without help are children," the president said in his first press conference in office,
while explaining that lonely adults and families will be sent back to Mexico
, something that is already negotiating with its counterparts in the neighboring country.
A Mexican girl drowned while trying to cross the Rio Grande
March 26, 202100: 32
Despite the Administration's message continuing to be that the “border is closed,” hundreds of migrants continue to face dangerous crossings of rivers and deserts, and to place themselves in the hands of human traffickers to reach the United States.
Since October 1, Border Patrol agents in and around the city of Eagle Pass have "rescued more than 500 migrants attempting to enter the country illegally," according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP, for its acronym in English).
The number of asylum seekers grows every day at a rate that has collapsed shelter and processing centers on the southern border.
Currently, there are more than 15,000 children and adolescents in government custody, some housed in convention centers or Border Patrol facilities designed for adults and in overcrowded conditions.
The federal government has refused to refer to the current humanitarian situation at the border as a crisis.
Instead, the president said Thursday that "nothing has changed" on the border with Mexico, when asked about the dramatic increase in the flow of migrants.
He defended that it is a phenomenon that "occurs every year."
"There is a rebound in the winter months, it happens every year. They have more possibilities to travel in winter because of the temperatures and because the circumstances in their countries are what they are," he justified.
Now Araceli Franco's family in the United States is reconsidering whether it was worth it for the woman to undertake the dangerous journey across the Rio Grande with her young children.
On video: The solo journey of a 7-year-old migrant girl to seek asylum in the United States.
March 25, 202101: 20
"We are devastated by all this that is happening," Amalia Franco, the girl's aunt, told Noticias Telemundo.
“The illusions, the dreams, the happiness are over.
It was all over in a little while, ”he
added.
And he makes a bitter reflection on the tragedy: "Our country [Guatemala] is bad," he says, "but even with beans and tortillas one has their kids alive."
Magabi's body is found in Texas, from where her mother and her relatives in Indianapolis, Indiana, hope to be able to move her to this second city to say goodbye.
The family opened a GoFundMe page to collect funds for funeral expenses.