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Federal prosecutors in the Western District of Texas have charged three people in a scheme to sell a Mexican child.
Prosecutors did not say what the purpose of the transaction was, but the case highlights the fraud at the border relative to birth certificates and children thought to be in “families” when they cross.
Illegal aliens rent children to get across and claim asylum with authorities, and those children are sometimes “recycled” back across only to return again as a member of another “family.”
$2,500 Price Tag
Elida Kassandra Moreno, a 26-year-old American who lives in Piedras Negras, Mexico, faces a charge of bringing an illegal alien into the U.S. for profit and lying to a federal agent. She also faces a separate complaint of conspiracy to transport an illegal alien, along with Victor Manuel Monsivais, 65, of San Antonio, and Nery Uriostegui Dominguez, a 26-year-old Mexican.
Zavala County Sheriff’s deputies, prosecutors allege, stopped Moreno in Batesville, Texas, and took her to the office of Homeland Security Investigations, a subsidiary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in Eagle Pass.
“While being questioned, Moreno told investigators she was approached by a friend’s neighbor in Piedras Negras to transport a boy to his family in San Antonio while using her own son’s birth certificate in exchange for $1,700,” prosecutors say.
Moreno and the child crossed at Eagle Pass, rented a hotel room, then traveled to San Antonio the next day by shuttle.
While there, Moreno told prosecutors, the “friend’s neighbor told her to meet Uriostegui at Santa Rosa Park, collect $2,500 from him and deliver the child.” But then, the friend’s neighbor said “not to hand over the child and a struggle between Moreno and Uriostegui ensued.”
San Antonio cops showed up and arrested Uriostegui. But then, oddly, the friend’s neighbor told Moreno to give the boy to the neighbor’s father, Monsivais, at a truck stop on I-35 South in San Antonio. That Moreno did, prosecutors allege.
But “HSI agents received information that Monsivais and the child would soon be at a location near Military Dr. and Goliad in San Antonio,” prosecutors say. “When Monsivais arrived, HSI agents arrested him and took custody of the child.”
ABC affiliate KSAT reported that Monsivais picked the boy up at Love’s Travel Stop and that HSI arrested him at an H-E-B store about 15 miles away.
The conspiracy charge carries a $250,000 fine and a 10-year prison sentence. As well, Moreno faces another 10-year sentence for bringing an illegal alien across the border for profit, and another five years for lying to a federal agent.
Although this case involved child trafficking, it highlights the crisis at the border. Illegals “rent” children and buy phony birth certificates or other identification so they can present themselves as “family units,” a get-of-out-jail-free card once border agents apprehend them.
Other Border News
Meanwhile, border agents across the southwest frontier continued their endless struggle to keep sex perverts and drug smugglers out of the country.
At Eagle Pass on July 26, they collared a Mexican illegal, Nicanor Rodriguez-Garcia, 45, just after he jumped the border, Customs and Border Protection reported. “During processing, records checks revealed that he was convicted in 1995 for sexual assault of a child in San Angelo and served 10 years in prison. He was deported to Mexico in 2005.”
Next day, agents there stopped 121 pounds of methamphetamine hidden in the gas tank of a Dodge Durango.
On Wednesday, agents at the Freer Border Patrol Station arrested four illegals who were traveling in a stolen white Ford F-250 pickup.
Agents “received information of a suspicious white pickup truck exiting a ranch off Highway 44 east of Encinal, Texas,” CBP reported. After the agents gave chase, the illegals tried to escape by driving off the highway, ramming through a ranch fence and exiting the vehicle.
The four illegal-alien truck thieves, all Mexicans, didn’t get very far. The truck was stolen in Burleson.
Also on Wednesday, border agents in the Tucson sector nailed six smugglers and seized their wares about 30 miles east of Lukeville.
“Border Patrol agents utilizing detection technology briefly spotted the group walking northbound from the border in an area well-known to agents as a drug smuggling corridor,” CBP reported.
They tracked the footprints, which led them to backpacks on the ground, and then to four Guatemalans, one Ecuadorian, and one Mexican national who were hiding in the brush.
The backpacks contained 25 pounds of methamphetamine.
Image: P_Wei via iStock / Getty Images Plus
