Verifying claims by U.S. border authorities that some illegal immigrants are using children who aren’t theirs to try to enter the United States, Mexican authorities have come forward to assert that illegal immigrants in Tijuana are preying on vulnerable single mothers in shelters by suggesting they sell their children to them.

The Seattle Times reports that Tijuana law enforcement authorities are “warning migrant mothers to keep their children close by and supervised, after reports of men offering to purchase migrant children in order to cross.”

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The Seattle Times quoted one woman from Honduras confessing, “I can’t go to work because I can’t take my eyes off my boys,” adding that the men have offered roughly $350 to buy children at the Iglesia Embajadores de Jesus shelter in Tijuana. She concluded, “They want to rob our kids so they can cross into the United States.”

Pastor Gustavo Banda, who supervises the Iglesia Embajadores de Jesus shelter and secures the shelter with a chain lock, stated, “These are cases of desperation. Of course, the women have not accepted any of these offers, but clearly this is a huge concern because of the danger to the children.”

When she served as Homeland Security Secretary in 2018, Kirstjen Nielsen . . . told the National Sheriffs’ Association:

First, under existing law, certain unaccompanied alien children from Mexico and Canada who enter illegally and have no valid claim to stay can be quickly returned home, but unaccompanied children from every other country in the world must be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) within 72 hours and then released to parents or guardians in the United States. This is a significant pull factor that encourages these children to make the dangerous journey north. . . .

As I mentioned earlier, this effectively creates a “get out of jail free” card for families and groups who pose as families. Unsurprisingly, word of this loophole has spread across the world. From October 2017 to this February, DHS saw a staggering 315 percent increase in illegal aliens fraudulently using children to pose as family units to gain entry into the country, compared to the previous year.

According to reporting from Brandon Showalter of  Christian Post, in fiscal year 2017, Department of Homeland Security data show that there were 46 cases of family fraud. In fiscal year 2018, there were 600.

(Excerpted from Daily Wire, article by Hank Berrien.)