EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A federal judge has set an Aug. 26 trial-setting date for a California couple accused of smuggling two Mexican children across the border by passing them off as their own.
Laura Aracely Rodriguez and Cristian Velez Gutierrez cleared inspection at the Calexico U.S. port of entry when border agents stopped them last month at a tactical highway checkpoint near Westmoreland, California.
Court records show a Border Patrol agent asked for identification and purpose of travel. Rodriguez presented a U.S. passport card and Velez pulled out his “green card” residency document. The couple stated they were driving to shop at the Cabazon Outlets. The agent noticed a teenager and three children in the back and that’s when the couple got in trouble.
Rodriguez and Velez told the agent a male child in a booster seat and another boy were their kids. Records show the agent became suspicious when Velez began stuttering and looking away, so he sent them to a secondary inspection area.
There, border agents interviewed the older boy in the back, and he allegedly told them that “the lady is driving me to be reunited with my parents.”
The agents confronted Rodriguez, who admitted she picked up the two male children from a woman in Mexicali, Mexico, and would be paid $6,000 to deliver them to an undisclosed address in Indio, California, according to a complaint affidavit filed in U.S. District Court for Southern District of California.
The woman allegedly said she crossed the Mexican boys into Calexico, California, by using her own children’s identity documents. The children were asleep when the SUV approached a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection booth, so they were not questioned, she told the Border Patrol.
Velez, a legal permanent resident of the U.S., said he accompanied his wife on the trip to Mexico “so that she would not be alone,” and that he knew the two boys were not authorized to be in the United States, court records show.
Border agents determined that the female in the vehicle, who is under 18, was the daughter of Rodriguez and Velez, and the baby she was carrying in her arms was hers. She was released; her parents were arrested.
Records show the defendants waived indictment on Aug. 1 and that Rodriguez entered a plea of not guilty ahead of trial. The Mexican boys were placed in immigration custody. The older boy was kept in the U.S. as a material witness to the case. Records show he was released to “a parent or guardian” after approval by the Office of Refugee Resettlement.