A previously deported Honduran man has been charged in a Texas court with alien smuggling after he illegally crossed the U.S-Mexico border with a six-month-old baby who was not his, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The federal immigration agency announced Thursday afternoon 51-year-old Amilcar Guiza-Reyes, who was deported in 2013, was charged in federal court in the Southern District of Texas on May 10 after entering the U.S. on May 7 with an unrelated baby he had claimed was his son.
“Cases like this demonstrate the real danger that exists to children in this disturbing new trend,” ICE Homeland Security Investigations acting Executive Associate Director Alysa Erichs said in a statement. “And while we have seen egregious cases of smugglers renting and recycling children, this case involving a six-month-old infant is a new low — and an unprecedented level of child endangerment.”
[Related: Trump moves toward high-skill immigration system]
Immigration officials said Border Patrol agents working along the Rio Grande River near Hidalgo, Texas, witnessed Guiza-Reyes wading through the river with the infant in his arms. After crossing the river, which serves as the international boundary, Guiza-Reyes surrendered to agents. During his interview with agents at the Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, Guiza-Reyes provided a Honduran birth certificate for the child that investigators later determined was invalid.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the man eventually admitted to Homeland Security Investigations officials that he had “obtained the child’s fraudulent document to show him as the father and that he intended to use the child to further his unlawful entry to the U.S.”
The child’s identity was not shared for privacy reasons. Officials said the infant was turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement because the child was now technically an unaccompanied minor. Health and Human Services will try to place the child with a family member in the U.S.
[Also read: Lindsey Graham debuts massive immigration reform targeting Central American migrants]
Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the incident is part of a growing trend of adults bringing a child to the border “to take advantage of loopholes in immigration laws and avoid being detained by immigration authorities.”
The agency said it found 95 families, which constitutes at least two people in each family, were detected among those who were taken into custody on the southern border from mid-April through May 10.
The Border Patrol documented 3,000 incidents, or individuals, in the first six months of fiscal 2019 in which an adult and child who claimed to be related were not. That’s about 1% of the 361,000 people it took into custody in that timespan. Roughly 53,000 of the 92,000 people arrested at the southern border in March claimed to be traveling with a family member, the highest percentage and number of people in Border Patrol history.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently announced plans to carry out rapid DNA tests on immigrants in custody who have claimed to be related. The 90-minute DNA tests will be used at unspecified locations in an effort to verify familial claims and refer for prosecution adults who try to use an unrelated child to take advantage of U.S. policy.
A 2015 court ruling in the Flores settlement agreement mandated families going through asylum proceedings not be held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody more than 20 days. The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed the ruling created an “incentive” to travel to the U.S. with real or fake family members.
