Border agents find 7 endangered baby monkeys in backpack

Texas border patrol agents rescued seven endangered baby spider monkeys that were smuggled inside a backpack over the southern border.

Video from an arrest in Brownsville on Thursday shows officials opening the bag and finding the monkeys huddled together.

“Aw, poor babies,” one of the agents says.

The monkeys were seized from a juvenile offender, who stuffed the simians inside a backpack that had holes poked in it to allow them to breathe, officials said.

“This case highlights the lengths smugglers will go to maximize profits with no regard for the lives of migrants or animals,” said Gloria Chavez, the chief patrol agent for the Rio Grande Valley sector.

The endangered monkeys have since been transferred to the agents with the US Fish and Wildlife Department. Their current condition was not made immediately available.

This is not the first time border agents have caught the endangered monkeys being smuggled across the border.

Last year, Savannah Nicole Valdez, of Katy, Texas, pleaded guilty to smuggling a spider monkey into the US through the use of a beer box when officials caught her trying to sell the simian online.

In 2021, another woman was detained in South Texas after border agents found her carrying four spider monkeys inside a duffle bag.

Spider monkeys are named over their habit of dangling from trees using their long tails. They are among the 25 most threatened primates in the world, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

The simians, who live in the rainforests of Central and South America, are dying out due to habitat loss, hunting, fragmentation and pet trade smuggling, the WCS noted.