I think she's done, bro. >> I know, so >> Yeah. >> A woman climbs a 30-ft border fence in the dark, gets stuck on the far side, and spends the next 24 minutes asking for help that keeps almost arriving. By the time it does, it's too late to matter. March 21st, 2024, approximately 10:27 at night. The US Border Patrol [music] Tactical Communications Center gets a radio report. A group of people, one of them carrying a ladder, approaching the secondary border fence east of the San Ysidro Port of Entry. The fence at this stretch is roughly 30-ft tall, built from vertical metal bollards with an electrical conduit running along the top of the north side near a nearby gate. At approximately 10:30, an agent arrives between the primary and secondary fences >> [music] >> and sees a woman already on top of it. CBP's cameras have been standard for agents since 2021, worn at chest height, and the agency is explicit that the [music] footage doesn't capture everything an agent actually sees. There's also a 2-minute buffer, video recorded silently before an agent manually turns on the audio, built to catch whatever happens too fast to react to. Whatever's about to unfold here happens slowly, in full view of multiple cameras, [music] which makes it harder to explain away as something nobody saw coming. He tells her not to go over, not to try climbing down the north side. She goes anyway and gets stuck partway down, unable to continue. >> Hey, I got someone on the on on on top of the secondary. Can someone um Can someone come on north of the secondary? >> At 10:31, the agent radios that a woman is stuck and asks for the fire department to be notified. >> [music] >> She starts yelling for help. He tells her it's coming. >> Yeah, we're going to need a ladder right here just like Cactus and north of the secondary. We got a single female stuck on top. >> 3 minutes later, someone from a nearby commercial lot walks up on the north side. He says a co-worker has a ladder sitting right there. One that could reach her immediately. >> Do you have a ladder? You go across the secondary. >> They do not. >> 10-4. >> The agent tells him [music] no. Border Patrol can't use it. Not until the fire department arrives. The woman [music] stays where she is. >> 10-4. Sending that way. Cactus and north of the [music] secondary. We got a single female stuck on top. >> Yes, they're stuck on copy female stuck on top of the secondary. >> North side was still stuck on the secondary. On the north side of the secondary. >> 10-4. I'll call the fire department. >> 10-4. Uh, we wait. >> At 10:45, 15 minutes after the first radio call, a second agent and a San Diego fire department truck finally arrive, but not where she is. The gate that leads [music] to her side of the fence is 520 ft away and the truck is too big to make the turn into it. >> [music] >> It has to find another way around burning more minutes she doesn't have while she's still hanging on the other side of a fence nobody with the right equipment can reach. At 10:48, she yells that she's struggling to hold on. An agent tells her firefighters will be there within minutes. At 10:50, another agent finally reaches her side of the fence. She's still yelling [music] that she can't hold on much longer. He tells her to hang on. A ladder is coming. Then, at 10:53, that agent leaves. CBP's own account says he drove off to help coordinate transportation for other migrants who'd been caught nearby that night. 1 minute later, at 10:54, she yells that she's going to fall. And she does. She strikes a raised concrete base on the north side of the fence, then lands on the dirt road below. The agent on the south side calls it in immediately and requests medical help. >> Hang on, please. We didn't make it in time. She couldn't hold on. >> The fire truck still isn't there. It's still working its way around. Agents on scene trying to figure out where it's even coming from. >> Where the [ __ ] did fire go? They come between the fences or where they go? >> I just called them. The radio is just recorded. She know has massive head trauma. She's unresponsive. It was EMS that >> At 10:59, another agent reaches her and radios in what he's seeing. Massive head trauma, heavy bleeding, [music] no response. >> Yeah, she [ __ ] fell and hit her head, dude. Yeah. >> Someone tries to keep the scene organized for what's coming next. Space for the truck that's finally getting close, and for everyone who will need to follow it. >> Yeah, she she's So, we're about to make room for firefighters, the ambulance, and [ __ ] corner all that [ __ ] so. I don't know which way they're coming in, but >> They came between the fences and they couldn't make that corner there, so I think they had to come all the way around. So, I I don't know. I don't know where they're coming from, but >> They start [music] CPR. It doesn't bring her back. At 11:17 [music] p.m., fire department personnel call a physician at Scripps Mercy Hospital. Over the phone, without ever seeing her, the doctor pronounces her dead. CBP identifies her only as a 24-year-old citizen of Guatemala. It's later reporting, not the official release, that gives her a name, Petronila Elizabeth Poma Perez. San Diego police arrive at 11:43 p.m. Just after 1:00 a.m., >> [music] >> investigators from the San Diego County Medical Examiner's office take custody of her body. CBP says its Office of Professional Responsibility is reviewing the incident alongside San Diego police and the medical examiner. The fire department's own professional standards unit and the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General are notified as well. None of those reviews' findings are ever made public in the material available. Not the medical examiner's final cause of death ruling. Not whether Border Patrol policy is the reason a ladder sitting 50 ft away couldn't be used. Not why the agent who reached her with a minute left chose that moment to leave. Or what coordinating transportation for other migrants required that couldn't wait 60 more seconds. CBP posts the footage on July 17th, nearly 4 months after the fact. 27 minutes long, built from radio traffic and more than one agent's camera, >> [music] >> documenting in careful detail everything that happened around Petronila Elizabeth Poma Perez >> [music] >> in the 24 minutes she spent stuck on a border fence. And comparatively little about why nobody reached her in time. CBP's own release says investigators also reviewed remote surveillance footage and interviews with migrants and personnel on scene. None of that additional material has been made public.