Human trafficking of children across our southern border is a massive problem. Instead of focusing on the ease with which criminals are able to smuggle children into the U.S., while our border agents are overwhelmed with an invasion of our southern border, they’d rather focus on the number of toothbrushes in the detention centers.
Today, three suspects were charged with smuggling a kidnapped 9-year-old boy across the Mexico border into the U.S. and trying to sell him for $2,500.
SA Current reports -A press release from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reveals that the boy was with 65-year-old Manuel Monsivais, a San Antonio man, when he was rescued by authorities at an H-E-B on the city’s South Side.
According to authorities, the scheme began when 26-year-old Elida Kassandra Moreno, an American citizen living in Piedras Negras, was asked by a friend’s neighbor to take the boy to family in San Antonio. After being paid $1,700, Moreno is alleged to have used her own son’s birth certificate to bring the boy across the U.S.-Mexico border through Eagle Pass.
Moreno and the child reportedly left Eagle Pass via a shuttle van that went through a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint and stopped in San Antonio.
According to the Fort Worth Telegram – The friend’s neighbor told Moreno not to hand over the boy causing “a struggle between Moreno and [Dominguez],” officials say. San Antonio Police Department showed up at the scene and arrested Dominguez.
After, Moreno was instructed to deliver the child to Victor Monsivais, 65, instead. She handed him over at a truck stop in San Antonio, officials say.
Following a sting orchestrated by Homeland Security Investigations, officials intercepted the boy and Monsivais in a grocery store parking lot in San Antonio on Wednesday morning, according to KSAT. Monsivais was arrested and the boy was recovered, officials say.
On Tuesday, Moreno was pulled over in Batesville, TX, and questioned at an Homeland Security facility in Eagle Pass when she told officials the complicated story, they say.
In May, we reported about how our governemnt is working to combat the human trafficking of young children across our southern border, by testing the DNA of kids. Under an Immigration and Customs Enforcement pilot program, illegal immigrant children and the adults claiming to be their parents will have their DNA tested to verify kinship when agents suspect fraud.
Human traffickers – often called “coyotes” – have learned the weaknesses of our immigration system. They know that “family units” are difficult to detain or deport, especially compared to the single men who used to make up the bulk of their clientele.
The Daily Mail reports that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement pilot of new rapid DNA testing at the border has found that nearly a third of those tested were not biologically related to the children in their custody.
ICE conducted the pilot for a few days earlier this month in El Paso and McAllen, Texas, finding about 30 percent of those tested were not related to the children they claimed were their own, an official told the Washington Examiner.
The official said that these were not cases of step-fathers or adoptive parents.
