Smugglers in recent weeks have been abandoning large groups of Guatemalan and other Central American migrants in Arizona’s harsh cactus-studded Sonoran Desert near the border with Mexico, alarming Border Patrol officials who say the trend is putting hundreds of children at risk.
Collectively, more than 1,400 migrants have been left by smugglers in the broiling desert — or in one case in a drenching thunderstorm — in remote areas by the border since Aug. 20. One group was as large as 275 people.
“We’ve seen large groups in the past, but never on this scale,” Tucson-based Border . . .
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