Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall medically assisted a migrant suffering from heat exhaustion at the U.S.-Mexico border late Friday.
Marshall, a physician, accompanied Border Patrol agents in an area where human smugglers drop off illegal migrants in Brooks County, Texas. The agent, Capt. Davila, and the senator pulled up near a smuggler’s vehicle carrying four to five migrants.
Agents handcuffed one person along the side of the highway and encountered a migrant hiding in the trunk. After the migrant was pulled out of the trunk, officials discovered she was dehydrated and had been suffering from an injured knee. Marshall handed her water and medically assisted her injuries.
“She’s not making much sense. She’s really dehydrated,” an officer said.
Marshall and the officers carried her over to a cooler area, helped her breathe and kept her hydrated.
“This is what they’re going to go through to get through,” Davila said. “They’ll do whatever they got to do to get to where they got to go. That’s how it is every day up and down this highway. There’s us, it’s mostly border patrol that does this every single day.”
Marshall told Fox News Digital that the migrant’s state of health could have easily led to death within hours, then credited Border Patrol agents for consistently assisting migrants in dire conditions. (RELATED: Border Patrol Agent Jumps Into Rio Grande To Save Illegal Migrants From Drowning)
“The one young lady was obviously having heat exhaustion, and maybe she was bordering on heat stroke so when they brought her I was able to look at her, and … her respiration was really fast, her pulse was 140, she hadn’t drunk water in two days, her knee was hurting, her hand was cut up from the barbed wire fence, and I really think she’d have probably died in, I don’t know, an hour or two. We got her cooled down, got water to her, just basic first aid, so that’s what you’re seeing me attend to her health needs.”
“I don’t get intimidated by situations and when they brought her back over the fence and I saw her breathing as she was I knew she was in distress, the agent yelled for help, and she was semi-conscious, fading in and out. That’s heat exhaustion going into heatstroke, and once heat stroke starts, it’s almost irreversible,” he said. “Those poor officers are expected to be nurses, social workers, psychologists and at the same time have to keep themselves safe and keep America safe. I was able to do my little part, but they’re the true heroes, not me.”
The senator told the outlet that the incident shows the “unsustainable humanitarian crisis” at the border that have leads many migrants to face sexual abuse, injuries, infections, dehydration and sometimes drowning across the river. He pinned the policies of President Joe Biden’s administration for the ongoing crisis.
“This is an unsustainable humanitarian crisis, this is a human tragedy created by Joe Biden and his policies,” he said. He wants this crisis, either he’s the most incompetent person in the world, or he wants this crisis – he wants to remake America. He needs to go see what I saw, not fly into a little airport there and say, ‘I went to the border’ like the vice president. Joe Biden needs to go see the crisis he’s created.”