(The Center Square) – Human smugglers and traffickers continue to be arrested, convicted and sentenced in the Southern District of Texas.
The district covers 43 counties in Texas from Houston to the Mexican border, representing more than nine million residents. In the past week, notable human trafficking and smuggling cases include one in which girl toddlers were knocked out with melatonin gummies in order to be smuggled into Texas from Mexico.
“Human smugglers may have had an easy time over the past few years, but those days are over. If you engage in these crimes, if you break our nation’s immigration laws, you will be caught and you will be punished. Simple as that,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas Nicholas Ganjei said.
In one case, several conspirators were sentenced to federal prison for smuggling “unaccompanied alien children” (UAC) for profit. This month, 23-year-old Laredo resident Vanessa Valadez was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. Other co-conspirators Ana Laura Bryand, 47, Dallas; her niece, Kayla Marie Bryand, 20; Jose Eduardo Bryand, 43, and Nancy Guadalupe Bryand, 44, all of Laredo; and Lizeth Esmeralda Bryand Arredondo, 32, of Mexico, were already sentenced to federal prison for their role in the scheme.
A multi-agency investigation found that from August to September 2023, Valadez and other family members operated a child smuggling ring focused on smuggling children – all under age five – from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, into the U.S.
Three smuggled girls “remain unidentified and their whereabouts are unknown.”
The details of the case are extensive, including holding the children in stash houses, smuggling them across the border into downtown Laredo, transporting them further into the U.S. and delivering them “to unknown people.”
An investigation began after federal officials at the Juarez Lincoln Bridge in Laredo thwarted a smuggling operation that they discovered involved sedating girl toddlers with melatonin gummies and using unlawfully obtained birth certificates to claim they were family members, according to the charges.
“One text message uncovered in the investigation showed an image depicting an unconscious child and a caption, ‘La noquiamos con unas gomitas,’” meaning, “we knocked her out with some gummies.’”
“Those that choose to engage in the human trafficking business are not good people. They aren’t motivated by altruism or sympathy. They are paid to traffic in human beings, and they treat people they smuggle as nothing more than cargo,” Ganjei said. “The Southern District of Texas will not rest until all such smuggling rings – particularly those that deal in children – are completely eradicated.”
In another case, Mexican national Edgar Ruiz-Briones, who was illegally living in Houston, admitted to smuggling more than 100 illegal foreign nationals into the U.S. over 18 months. The scheme involved hiring drivers from as far away as Kansas to travel to the Rio Grande Valley where illegal border crossers were held in stash houses, transported to Houston and then further into the interior.
Ruiz-Briones had been previously removed from the U.S. multiple times, pleaded guilty to illegally reentering and remaining in the U.S. He faces up to 10 years in federal prison for the alien smuggling conspiracy and up to 20 years for illegally re-entering the U.S. He remains in custody; his sentencing is scheduled for October.
In another case, a Laredo resident was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison after the court heard evidence of a history of smuggling illegal foreign nationals “on multiple occasions and the danger he posed by transporting them in a sealed, locked, dark and unventilated trailer that required authorities to open with a bolt cutter.”
“Human smuggling is an incredibly dangerous enterprise, and it requires the trafficker to care absolutely nothing about the lives and safety of those they transport,” Ganjei said. “Fortunately, there were no deaths in this case, but the underlying facts indicate that several of those transported had difficulty breathing and feared for their life.”
The Laredo man was arrested last year after authorities conducted a traffic stop and found 101 illegal foreign nationals locked inside a trailer. They were citizens of Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico; 13 were children as young as 13. “Multiple illegal aliens reported they had difficulty breathing and feared for their life due to the conditions in the trailer,” Ganjei’s office said.
In another case, another Laredo man was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison “for exploiting social media, inclement weather and the Covid-19 pandemic to carry out a multi-year conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens into the country. … The court held him responsible for more than 100 aliens and further imposed enhancements for unaccompanied minors, reckless endangerment and being a leader/organizer in the conspiracy,” Ganjei’s office said.
These are but a handful among hundreds of border cases being prosecuted a week in the district under the Trump administration.
