*Footage of a 10-year-old Nicaraguan boy crying and asking a Texas border agent for help has gone viral.
Per PEOPLE, the video was taken April 1 by a Rio Grande border patrol agent. The footage shows the boy walking along a dirt road to law enforcement and explaining that the group he was traveling with had left him behind.
“I came looking because I didn’t know where to go, and they can also rob or kidnap me or something,” the child tells the officer. Watch the moment via the clip above.
In a statement to PEOPLE, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the agent “transported the child to a Border Patrol facility where he was fed and medically screened.”
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“As with all unaccompanied alien children the border patrol encounters, he will be safely transferred to the custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement,” the agency added.
Jennfer Podkul, vice president of policy and advocacy at Kids in Need of Defense, said that the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) will next “provide care and custody until they can find a sponsor or someone to take care of the child.”
“Once he’s put into deportation proceedings, it will be up to him to prove to a judge that he should be able to stay,” unless he is able to hire an attorney or is connected with one through a nonprofit organization, Podkul said of the boy.
The video comes a week after CBP footage showed smugglers dropping two Ecuadorian girls over a 14-foot border fence in the New Mexico desert.
“Immediately after both children landed on the ground, two smugglers immediately fled the area and abandoned the helpless little girls on the north side of the international boundary line,” read a CBP statement released with the footage. The children “remain in Border Patrol temporary holding pending placement by Health and Human Services,” according to the agency.Â
“The children, a six-year-old boy and five-year-old girl, were unable to communicate with agents except for providing their names,” border patrol said in a statement. The children “provided agents a handwritten note which had their mom’s name and phone number on it.”
Agents were reportedly able to contact the mother, and the children will be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services, according to the CBP.
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