A woman from Texas has admitted to drugging young girls who were being trafficked into the United States with melatonin gummies.
On Friday, Vanessa Valadez, a 23-year-old Laredo resident, entered a guilty plea to smuggling children under the age of five into the United States from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, between August and September of 2023.
“La noquiamos con unas gomitas,” one of Valdez’s co-conspirators wrote in a message alongside an image of a passed-out girl during one operation which translates to “we knocked her out with some gummies.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) claims that Valdez and her family drugged the four young girls they brought into the nation illegally, passing them off as family members with phoney birth certificates after snatching them up from a stash house across the border.
The girls were brought further into the US after Laredo and left with unidentified individuals for unidentified reasons.
Finally, on September 21, 2023, during a routine border inspection by border officers, Valdez and her conspirators were stopped.
According to a statement from HSI, the identities and whereabouts of the three girls who were brought into the country illegally are still unknown.
Ana Laura Bryand, 47, her niece Kayla Marie Bryand, 20; Jose Eduardo Bryand, 43; Nancy Guadalupe Bryand, 44; and Lizeth Esmeralda Bryand Arredondo, 32, all conspired with Valdez. Each had already entered a guilty plea for their roles in the ill-fated plot.
The startling admissions coincide with a warning from US border patrol officials that child trafficking is increasing along the border.
The Post was previously informed by Border Patrol sources that there has been an increase in the use of children by smugglers to pose as families, and that children are occasionally seen arriving at the border repeatedly, but with different people each time.
