At least ten illegal aliens were injured over the weekend after they fell from the 30-foot wall near the Tijuana River Valley at the California-Mexico border.
According to several reports, some of the illegal immigrants who fell from the wall were traveling into the United States with their children. San Diego Fire-Rescue responded to what they described as a “mass casualty incident.”
“We ended up transporting 10 patients utilizing six ambulances to area trauma centers to be evaluated for multiple types of injuries," SDFD Battalion Chief Oscar Rodriguez told CBS 8. "All the patients were treated as they could here and then transported.”
Several men who climbed over the wall and were not injured were detained by Border Patrol.
Pedro Rios, an immigration rights advocate, told CBS 8,“We see cases on a daily basis of people that are injured from having fallen or burned their hands using the ropes to come down the border wall.”
“When I was there, I saw about 130 people that entered and I asked how they crossed, and they said by scaling the border wall," he continued. “The rain yet hadn’t fallen in the quantity that we’ve seen throughout the day, and so it’s likely that the slipperiness of the border wall led to people falling the way they did.”
Late last month, NBC San Diego reported how a father of three from Mexico died after falling from the border near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry. He was originally from Sinaloa, Mexico.
"All of our agents are trained in first aid because we are often or most of the time the ones who find these people first," Gerardo Gutierrez, a border patrol agent, told the outlet.
In November, The New York Times reported that many illegal immigrants are “undaunted” by the wall.
“The problem is getting worse and worse,” said Dr. Jay Doucet, chief of the trauma unit at U.C. San Diego Health, near the Tijuana-San Ysidro border crossing, “and the hospital system is taking a big hit.”