Children Being Drugged, Smuggled Into US: Border Patrol

Border Patrol agents warn that children as young as 8 are being drugged and smuggled into the U.S. by human traffickers posing as their parents or family members. No one knows how widespread the horrific practice is.

In recent weeks, authorities have rescued children caught up in two separate cases of this type of smuggling, according to the Border Guard — in one of which the alleged traffickers had birth certificates for multiple children to whom they were not related.

Border Patrol sources told The Post there has been an increase in smugglers posing as families to “recycle” children.

“A few years ago, when they were coming in large numbers, we had to let families in. People would come in and after a while we noticed that the children were the same, but the parents were different. The children were being recycled,” one Border Patrol source told The Post.

“I hate to think about it because there were thousands of kids there and who knows where they all ended up,” the source explained.

Authorities say it’s unclear what happens to the children once they’re smuggled into the U.S., but many are at risk for child labor and child sex trafficking.

These cases terrified the leaders of the Border Guard.

“Sometimes we encounter crimes so heinous that they defy human decency,” Gregory Bovino, chief of the Border Patrol in the El Centro sector of California, in the state’s southeast, said in response to the case.

In one case, border agents rescued a child at the border in California who was “highly dosed with sedatives to prevent him from talking” to officers, Bovino said Friday.

Agents discovered that the traffickers had birth certificates for multiple children.

Just weeks earlier, on Aug. 29, officers patrolling the San Luis, Arizona, border crossing stopped Marlen Contreras-Lopez — a 28-year-old U.S. citizen and Arizona resident — with two young children in her car who had been given sleeping pills, federal prosecutors said.

Contreras-Lopez initially claimed she was related to the children she tried to wake up during questioning, court documents show.

Then, when she got out of the car for a further check, officers noticed that one of the children had to be carried in arms while the other “had difficulty walking,” according to court documents.

“The woman was having difficulty waking the children. Officers noted that the children were very lethargic. While interviewing the children, officers quickly discovered there was no relationship between the woman and the two juveniles, ages 11 and 8,” said Diane J. Sabatino, deputy director general of the Office of Field Operations, in a post on X.

Contreras-Lopez also gave officers birth certificates that were real but did not belong to the minors, Sabatino said.

The children told officers that sleeping pills had been found in the car “to avoid detection,” according to court documents.

One of the children told officers that she and the other child, whom she believed to be her brother, were from the southern Mexican state of Michoacán, according to court documents. From their hometown, the children took a bus to the Mexican border city of San Luis Rio Colorado, where Contreras-Lopez picked them up.

The child said his mother was still in Mexico and that they had both been sent to live with his mother’s boyfriend.

Contreras-Lopezas was charged with smuggling, according to court documents. The two children were turned over to Mexican authorities.

Under the Biden-Harris administration, the number of children illegally crossing the US border alone and without relatives has increased dramatically.

Thousands of these children remain untraceable after being handed over to sponsors who whistleblowers say are not adequately vetted in the US.

Since May 2024, 291,000 unaccompanied migrant minors have been released to sponsors but never ordered to appear in court — meaning federal authorities have lost contact with them.

Another 32,000 children were released into the U.S. but later failed to appear in court, according to the 14-page report covering the period from October 2018 to September 2023.