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Three children and a woman are found dead along the border in Texas

Migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have crossed the border by the thousands in recent months, overwhelming Border Patrol agents, nonprofit groups and local officials.

Three children and a woman are found dead along the border in Texas

Migrant deaths happen with grim regularity along parts of the United States’ southwestern border, largely when adults and unaccompanied teenagers succumb to harsh desert conditions or a lack of water and die of dehydration, heat stroke or hypothermia. The discovery Sunday was unusual — it is rare for officials to discover dead migrant children on the U.S. side of the border and rarer still for the bodies of three children to be found together.

“Most of the time we usually find either adults or teenagers, but this is the first time we’ve actually found infants and toddlers, and it is pretty shocking for us,” said Hidalgo County Sheriff J.E. Guerra, who broke the news of the discovery on Twitter late Sunday night.

Officials said there were as yet no signs of foul play and that the four may have died from dehydration and heat exposure. The bodies appeared to be those of immigrants in the country illegally, but neither their identities nor their country of origin had been determined Monday.

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Migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have crossed the border by the thousands in recent months, overwhelming Border Patrol agents, nonprofit groups and local officials.

The four bodies were found by Border Patrol agents across the river from Reynosa, Mexico, in an area on the U.S. side of the border that is heavily traveled by Central American families. They were in a brush-covered region southeast of Anzalduas Park on federal property managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, near the state-run Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area, officials said. The FBI was leading the investigation because the bodies were found on federal land.

“It’s an incredibly heartbreaking situation, which seems to happen far too often,” Special Agent Michelle Lee, a spokeswoman for the FBI in San Antonio, said in a statement.

Early Monday morning, Anzalduas Park was quiet. The only noises were chirping birds and a slight ripple from the river, aside from the occasional Border Patrol truck or county constable vehicle driving by. The park — a 96-acre recreation area with picnic tables, playgrounds and a boat dock that is about 6 miles from downtown McAllen — has been a popular backdrop for visiting officials from Washington. President Donald Trump passed through earlier this year during his only visit to the Texas-Mexico border as president.

The area near the park along the Rio Grande has been a migrant-crossing hub in Hidalgo County. Migrant families with children cross the river here in small or large groups on makeshift rafts and then walk inland in search of Border Patrol agents so they can turn themselves in.

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Migrant deaths are more common far north of the river’s edge, on private ranchland deeper into South Texas. In those areas, water is harder to find, the terrain is more isolated and expansive, and migrants often hike for days ill-prepared for the journey.

It was unclear what went wrong for the woman and children whose bodies were found: whether they had gotten lost in the brush in the heat, whether they were already ill when they crossed the river, whether they were abandoned by smugglers or other migrants. Guerra said they were found in a makeshift staging area, a clearing near the river where groups of migrants often gather after they cross the river. From there, they typically walk deeper into the countryside to look for federal agents.

South Texas is always hot in June, but the heat has been extreme in recent days.

On Monday, the National Weather Service issued a “dangerous” heat advisory for the Rio Grande Valley region of South Texas, which includes McAllen. “Heat-related illnesses will likely occur for anyone working or playing outdoors for extended periods of time today,” the advisory said.

Over the past week in the valley, temperatures have regularly approached or exceeded 100 degrees. On Wednesday, the temperature hit 108 degrees.

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The Rio Grande Valley is the busiest Border Patrol sector for migrant apprehensions on the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

In May, a total of 132,887 migrant adults and children were apprehended between ports of entry on the entire southern border, an increase from 99,304 in April, according to Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency. Earlier this month, agents in the Rio Grande Valley sector apprehended more than 4,100 migrants in just three days.

On this stretch of the river, Border Patrol agents have routinely seen children in distress. In April, agents at the Fort Brown station near Brownsville found a 3-year-old boy alone in a cornfield, with his name and a phone number written on his shoes. He was crying but was in good condition. The boy was from Mexico and had been abandoned by smugglers.

One hot afternoon earlier in April, when New York Times journalists accompanied the Border Patrol to a wooded area a few miles from where the four bodies were found Sunday night, a group of nearly 20 migrants from Central America crossed the Rio Grande and turned themselves in to the border agents. The migrants were exhausted and thirsty; some children among them were coughing and had colds and fevers. There were signs on the ground that other children had crossed the border there before them: diapers, children’s T-shirts and an empty infant’s bottle.

The agents walked the migrants along a dirt road to an area where the Border Patrol was processing and transporting other migrants. A 4-year-old girl from Honduras who had a fever held her mother’s hand and struggled to keep up. One of the agents escorting the group, Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Marcelino A. Medina, lifted the girl and carried her in his arms, with her head shielded from the sun beneath a shirt.

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“She fell asleep as soon as I picked her up,” Medina said as the girl rested her head on his shoulder. “It’s not ideal temperatures. It’s not ideal humidity for little kids to be walking in.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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