Border Patrol agents are now reportedly cautioning that traffickers, who are posing as their parents or family members, are now drugging and smuggling children as young as eight into the United States.
The prevalence of this abhorrent practice is apparently on the rise.
In recent weeks, the Border Patrol has rescued children who were entangled in two distinct instances of smuggling.
One of the cases involved the alleged traffickers possessing birth certificates for numerous children to whom they were not related.
The fate of the children once they are smuggled into the United States is unclear to authorities; however, a significant number of them are susceptible to exploitation for child labor and child sex trafficking.
The Border Patrol’s commanders have been appalled by the number of cases of the practice crossing their desks in recent years.
In one instance, border agents rescued a child at the California border who had been severely dosed with sleep aids to prevent him from communicating with authorities.
Federal prosecutors reported that on August 29, officers stationed at a port of entry in San Luis, Arizona, apprehended Marlen Contreras-Lopez, a 28-year-old United States citizen and resident of Arizona, with two small children in her vehicle who had been administered sleep aids.
According to court documents, Contreras-Lopez initially asserted that she was related to the children and attempted to awaken them during the officers’ interrogation.
The officers quickly discovered that the woman and the two minors did not have a familial relationship while interviewing the children.
The children informed the officers that they were given sleep aids, which were discovered in the vehicle, in order to evade detection, as per the court documents.
According to the court documents, one of the children informed officers that she and the other child, whom she identified as her sibling, were from the southern Mexican state of Michoacán.
The two children took a bus from their community to the Mexican border town of San Luis Rio Colorado, where Contreras-Lopez allegedly collected them for transport across the border.
The number of minors crossing illegally into the United States alone and without relatives has increased significantly during the Biden-Harris administration.
[READ MORE: Israel Unleashes Massive New Strikes Against Hezbollah that Leaves Hundreds Dead]
