CUCUTA, Colombia AP β On a recent humid evening in the Colombian border city of Cucuta, a Venezuelan woman wrapped her newborn daughter in a pale yellow blanket and left her with a note alongside a car parked near a stadium hosting a high school field day.
About an hour later, another woman, her son and a teenage friend emerged from the stadium and heard the baby crying. They traced the faint wail to the car, just as the driver was starting the engine, coming dangerously close to striking the child. Officers arrived within minutes and took the child to a nearby hospital. But aside from the note, which said the mother was Venezuelan, there was nothing to identify the girl, who begins life in the midst of an exodus from Venezuela in which children are increasingly becoming the victims of abuse, malnutrition and even abandonment.
Amaury Aguilera, the officer overseeing the investigation. More than Venezuelan children have been taken into custody in Colombia, according to government documents. Over 1 million Venezuelans have fled across the porous border into Colombia in less than two years, many of them young children. A recent census found that of the estimated , Venezuelan migrants living in Colombia illegally, about a quarter are minors β 10 percent are 5 years old or younger.
And they come with children. The escalating influx is putting strain on an already stretched child welfare system in Colombia, where decades of war, poverty and social strife have rendered countless children the victims of abandonment, sex abuse and recruitment by illegal armed groups. Many Venezuelans have made long journeys by foot and bus when they reach Cucuta, a mountainous city where their homeland can easily be seen from its hilltops. They often have little more than a dollar in their pockets, if that, and several mouths to feed.
On a recent evening, Cucuta police found year-old Eliusmar Guerrero selling lollipops with her month-old daughter. Guerrero said she and her husband had been unable to pay for their room in an apartment for the last three days.
