Texas women admitted to prosecutors on Friday to running a migrant child smuggling operation that included using gummy candy to help the children sleep as they passed through border crossings.
Vanessa Valadez, a 23-year-old Texas woman, pleaded guilty to smuggling migrant children across the U.S.-Mexico border. According to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) press release: Between August and September 2023, Valadez and other members of the operation illegally brought minors under the age of five from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, into the United States. (RELATED: Kamala Harris caught on discovered video yelling “No to deportation”)
According to HSI, on Sept. 21, 2023, members of the smuggling ring were intercepted by police during a routine border inspection at the Juarez Lincoln Bridge near Laredo while attempting to transport another girl. The conspirators allegedly used illegally obtained birth certificates to fool authorities into believing the minor was a family member, then had the minor sleep in a melatonin gummy while being processed at the border crossing.
TOP SHOT – A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent gives food to a migrant child as he waits to be processed at a U.S. Border Patrol Transit Center after crossing the border from Mexico in Eagle Pass, Texas, on December 22, 2023. (Photo by Chandan Khanna/AFP) (Photo by Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)
According to HSI, in one successful execution, on the night of Sept. 29, 2023, members of a smuggling organization removed a girl from a safe house operated by the organization and delivered her across the border to Valadez in downtown Laredo. The girl was then removed by a co-conspirator and delivered to an unknown individual.
“The smuggling ring also attempted to transport at least four girls to the United States, three of whom remain unidentified and their whereabouts unknown,” the HSI press release stated. “Members of the smuggling ring obtained birth certificates for U.S. citizen children and posed as family members upon entry into the United States.”
A law enforcement investigation revealed that one of the members of the smuggling ring had sent a text message with an image of a sleeping child with the English caption, “I put her to sleep with gummy candies.”
A report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General released last month found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials failed to track all unaccompanied alien children who entered the United States and were released from government custody since fiscal year 2019, and that ICE did not know the whereabouts of at least 32,000 of those minors. (Related article: After an immigrant allegedly raped a woman at knifepoint, NYPD's top chief says city's sanctuary policies should disappear)
The DHS report also highlighted that, unlike adult migrant populations who enter the country illegally, unaccompanied migrant children are at risk of being trafficked, forced into labor, and otherwise exploited.
“The Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress have failed to accept responsibility or take accountability for failing to close our southern border,” Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last week, asking for an explanation for the safety of migrant children in the country. “This has allowed record numbers of criminal aliens to use migrant children as a 'free pass' to cross the border.”
“The Biden administration and its relevant ministries and agencies need to increase the transparency of their policies and properly implement related procedures. [unaccompanied alien children]” continued Gooden.
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