Women Serve Prison Terms for Child Smuggling at Mexican - U.S. Border

An article by Associated Press writer Amanda Lee Myers says that more and more women are being prosecuted and sent to prison for smuggling children across the U.S. - Mexican border.

Women who struggle to raise their own children, often times alone as single mothers, are taken in by sad stories of families separated by insensitive government officials and are convinced that they can help solve the problem by reuniting the families.

Sometimes the story comes from a co-worker or even a family member. The women are told that it would be easy to just pretend that the child is theirs and it will be easy to fool overtaxed border guards.

Some of the women even attempt to use their own children's birth certificates to pass the undocumented children across the border. Unfortunately, for some of the women sitting in state prisons, it is not always that easy to get away with, and the penalties are stiff if caught. Read more about illegal human trafficking in this A.C. article.

Many of the women who are enlisted to smuggle children into this country, convinced sometimes by professional smugglers, are poor and in need of the quick cash that they are sometimes offered. This seemingly easy task of what in actuality is a serious crime, feels like a good deed to help their suffering counterparts.

The women are sometimes citizens or legal aliens with green cards who have permission to pass across the border freely. To many of the pretend mothers, the money is tantalizing and easy. They are offered as little as $100 to pretend to be the child's mother for mere hours or less.

Few realize that they are jeopardizing months or years of their freedom, if caught. The stories are becoming more and more frequent and are often heart-breaking. There is an increase in the numbers of women caught while attempting to sneak a child or children across the border, according to some border control officials.

In Myers' article she states that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona has made prosecuting these child smuggling cases a top priority. U.S.officials also warn that trusting your child to the care of someone that you don't know or can't trust is foolish. Though a scary thought, there have been no documented cases where a child that was smuggled into the country by one of these surrogate mothers, was harmed or kidnapped.

In the poor economy in Mexico where there are no safety nets in place for the poor, more and more whole families are hoping to sneak across the border and blend into an already diverse society that lies just across the border. In past years men who came to the U.S. to work illegally would come alone and send money back to their family members, hoping to eventually return to the town where they had previously lived, and into an improved life that the money they had sent back home would finance.

Since the higher rate of the cost of living and lack of jobs in Mexico, it is now worth the risk for the family to come into the United States, where with hard work and a little luck, all things seem possible. Many families would rather face deportation back into Mexico if caught, rather than to see their children face a bleak future without an education, or to actually watch them starve.

To these families the choices are clear and easy. Unfortunately some professional smugglers are becoming involved in what has become a quite lucrative business and have begun to prey on easy targets, where the pay offs are small and the risks are huge. In one case smugglers offered to pay off the $100 bicycle held on layaway at Wal-Mart, for the son of 36 yr. old Ana Mezo-Montano.

All she had to do was pretend that a one year old girl was her own and bring her across the border from Agua Prieta, Mexico and into Douglas, Arizona. Mezo-Montano used her crossing card that she owned legally to cross into Douglas with the baby. She was caught and is presently serving a 15 month stint in prison.

Sandra Ramirez, a 24-year-old single mother of four, tried to pass an 11-year-old boy off as her son, while traveling into the U.S. through Nogales, Ariz. A co-worker had offered to give her an easy $1,000 to help reunite her family.

In Myers' AP article, Myers found that Ramirez is currently serving 15 months in state prison and will be deported to Mexico after her release. Joel Parris, an assistant federal public defender who has defended several of these women smugglers, told the AP, "They're a vulnerable class of people who got sucked into this. These women are so focused on survival and taking care of their own children that when someone comes to them with a pity trip, their sympathy is so strong that they can't resist."

Because of the crack-down on the borders around the United States due to Homeland Security issues and possible terrorism, more illegals are moving to more remote and dangerous areas in which to cross into the U.S.

These paths are loaded with the danger of severe desert heat and danger of robbery, rape or worse. Illegals are choosing to send their children with strangers looking for a few extra dollars or possibly just the desire to do a good deed, rather than subject their child to the perils of a long trek across the desert, or spending years in an orphanage awaiting the chance to join a parent in the land of opportunity. This will be little comfort to the women who have sacrificed their freedom and now sit in jail because their hearts were touched by a sad story or they needed a few dollars.

Sources:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070604/ap_on_re_us/smuggling_children;_ylt=AisFOrB6UZqCVq4611wAdCHMWM0F
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/233073/drug_cartel_now_traffics_illegals_across.html