Migrants allegedly offer reporter a child as payment for help crossing border

A Daily Caller reporter was offered a “little girl” by a group of Mexican nationals looking to cross the border illegally.

Jorge Ventura, who was reporting from the border in Yuma, Arizona, was apparently offered the girl as payment in exchange for helping them cross enter the country.

Ventura was reporting at the border and explaining how a pack of migrants were attempting to cross the border into Yuma as Border Patrol agents could not be found anywhere.

“The two men you see here are actually walking back to the Mexican side. They were actually Mexican nationals that were trying to cross into the country illegally,” he recalled. “They saw border patrol, so they actually started to walk back.”

He continued, saying, “But they actually tried to get me to drive them into Yuma and one of them said that he would offer me a nine—year-old little girl if I did it.”

Ventura recounted the incident while he showed video of a few Haitian migrants traveling toward the U.S. side while the Mexican nationals headed back to Mexico. While Ventura said they did not have a child with them at the time of the encounter, they assured him they could get him a child as little as nine.

“My initial reaction was just pure shock,” he said,” that they would say something like that so casually, like as if it was completely normal. They just kept trying to convince me to drive them in my truck into the town of Yuma and they were really concerned about being apprehended by border patrol which is the opposite from other migrants who actually want to be apprehended.” 

Ventura added that he was told by border patrol agents that they encountered illegal immigrants from more than 30 different countries over the weekend.

On Thursday, Republican Mayor of Yuma, Douglas Nicholls, declared a local emergency due to “unprecedented numbers of migrants entering the city … resulting in a humanitarian and border crisis.” Nicholls indicated that the increase in migrants was overwhelming local resources and harming the community’s agriculture industry as migrants pass on foot through “active production fields.”