United States: Border Patrol agents are alerting people to reports that human traffickers masquerading as parents or other family members are drugging and smuggling children as young as eight into the United States, sometimes more than once.
According to the New York Post, officials have saved infants in two of these cases, one of which involved alleged child traffickers who possessed birth certificates for numerous unrelated children, according to reports.
WATCH:
Border Patrol sources informed the publication that there is a growing number of cases where smugglers pose as families and then “recycle” the kids.
“A few years ago, when they were coming in en masse, we had to let family units in,” a Border Patrol source stated.
“After a while, we saw that while the parents were different, the children remained the same. The children were being recycled by them,” they added.
What happens to the kids after they are smuggled into the US is unknown, according to authorities.
“Many of them might wind up as victims of underage labor and sex trafficking,” according to The Post.
“There are instances when we come across criminal acts that are so heinous that they go against human decency,” stated Gregory Bovino, the El Centro sector chief of the Border Patrol in California.
Bovino reported that in one instance, after a youngster was recovered by border officials in California, it was discovered that the boy had been “heavily dosed with sleep aids to prevent him from talking.”
The traffickers possessed other birth certificates for different children, which the agents found out.
Federal prosecutors said that on August 29, 28-year-old US citizen and resident of Arizona Marlen Contreras-Lopez was taken into custody by officials at the San Luis, Arizona port of entry when it was discovered that she had two little children, who had been given sleeping pills, asleep in her car.
When police questioned Contreras-Lopez, she first claimed to be connected to the two kids and tried to wake them.
Upon exiting the vehicle for additional scrutiny, the police reported that one child required walking assistance while the other “struggled to walk.”
“The mother had trouble getting the kids to wake up. Police noted that the kids were still quite sleepy. Officers interviewed the youngsters and quickly found that the woman and the two minors, who are 8 and 11 years old, do not have a family link,” according to Executive Assistant Office of Field Operations Commissioner Diane J. Sabatino.
She also mentioned that although the mother had valid birth certificates, they were not the children’s. Officers were informed by the kids that they had been given sleep aids “to avoid detection.”
One of the children told officers that she and the other child, who she said was her brother, were from southern Mexico.
They had taken a bus to the Mexican border town of San Luis Rio Colorado, where the woman picked them up. She said their mother was still in Mexico while they were being sent to live with their mother’s boyfriend.
Welcome to Biden and Harris’ America.
Do you believe this administration is just as guilty as the traffickers who are stealing and smuggling innocent children?
