The accident came to light around 9:45 p.m. Central time on Wednesday when Border Patrol agents near Del Rio, Texas, apprehended a man who told them he had been crossing the Rio Grande with his family in an attempt to enter the United States when their raft overturned in the water, spilling its nine passengers into the river. The man said that he saw his 10-month-old child and 7-year-old nephew, as well as another man and that man’s daughter, swept away by the water.
The agents then heard screaming from the river and saw two people struggling in the water close to a raft. The man they had apprehended identified them as his wife and 6-year-old daughter. Agents entered the water and pulled the mother and child ashore, and began searching for the others who had been aboard the raft.
Two other passengers who had been aboard the raft, another man and his 13-year-old son, were later found on the U.S. side of the river. By Thursday morning, the agents were still searching for the four passengers who had not been recovered.
The chaotic episode highlights the rising death toll as migrants from Central America try to cross the border with Mexico in efforts to request asylum in the United States. Two detained migrant children from Guatemala died in December while in Border Patrol custody, and a 16-year-old boy from Guatemala died earlier this week in Texas after arriving at a shelter for unaccompanied children.
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Most migrant deaths on America’s southwest border occur on land. From October 1997 to September 2018, the Border Patrol recorded 7,505 migrant deaths in its nine sectors, and the vast majority consisted of the bodies and remains of migrants who died from dehydration and exposure to the elements while hiking through the desert or the brush. But a large number of those deaths were men, women and children who drowned while crossing the Rio Grande.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.