The Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicted a pair of illegal aliens accused of helping operate an international smuggling ring that trafficked migrant children across the United States-Mexico border as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) and, in some cases, fraudulently taking custody of them. Another illegal alien sexually abused a UAC to whom he fraudulently claimed to be related.
On Thursday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced federal indictments against 38-year-old Maritza Azucena Cahuec Coc and her brother, 33-year-old Carlos Agustin Cahuec Coc, both illegal aliens from Guatemala.
“For too many years, under the prior administration, unaccompanied children were smuggled to the United States and then taken in by a mismanaged government program guided by reckless policy direction,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said during a press conference:
Instead of protecting children, these defendants and others allegedly took advantage of the program and used it to entice the illegal smuggling of unaccompanied children to the United States and, as the sentence of Tiul Xi shows, leave them vulnerable to sexual assault, trafficking, and other exploitation. [Emphasis added]
According to the indictments against the Cahuec Coc siblings, from December 2020 to October 2023 the pair helped operate a migrant child-smuggling scheme at the border and gamed the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) vetting system to take custody of some of the children by falsely claiming to have familial relations to them.
Federal prosecutors say Maritza Azucena Cahuec Coc, after smuggling children into the U.S., would then submit UAC sponsor applications, using fake names and documents to claim that she was related to the children. In several cases, Maritza Azucena Cahuec Coc successfully gained custody of UACs.
When law enforcement arrested Carlos Agustin Cahuec Coc on May 28, he was found traveling in a car with a 16-year-old UAC. The illegal alien allegedly communicated with his sister to discuss their fraudulent operations.
Also indicted on Thursday is 20-year-old Gladys Marina Caal Chen, an illegal alien from Guatemala, who herself was fraudulently sponsored as a UAC by one of Maritza Cahuec Coc’s co-conspirators to get resettled in the U.S.
Prosecutors allege that Caal Chen, in January 2024, sought to sponsor a UAC through fraudulent means. At the time of her arrest, Caal Chen allegedly lied to law enforcement about her identity.
Perhaps most disturbing is a guilty plea from 27-year-old Juan Tiul Xi, an illegal alien from Guatemala, also announced by Blanche on Thursday. Prosecutors say Xi helped smuggle a 14-year-old female UAC into the U.S., falsely claimed he was the UAC’s brother, took custody of the child in September 2023, and then sexually abused the child.
Xi was convicted of sexual battery of a child and given an eight-year state prison sentence. In addition, Xi was sentenced to 26 months in federal prison.
“We will not tolerate criminals that use deceptive and fraudulent practices to deliberately abuse our immigration programs for their financial gain,” U.S. Attorney David Toepfer said in a statement:
If your business plan is to smuggle others into our country for a profit — especially children — you will come face to face with a federal judge for violating our country’s laws. We owe a debt of gratitude to the federal investigators who brought this dark truth to light taking place right here in Northern Ohio. We will aggressively prosecute these alleged crimes and bring those responsible for such actions to justice. [Emphasis added]
During the press conference on Thursday, Blanche suggested that the Biden administration, particularly former Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra, willingly allowed migrant children to be trafficked into the U.S. through the UAC program.
For years, Breitbart News has detailed allegations that the Biden administration pushed migrant children through the UAC pipeline as quickly as possible, failed to vet adult sponsors, and lost track of the children once they were placed with an adult in the U.S.
Last year, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused the Biden administration of becoming the “biggest facilitator for child abuse” in American history with its UAC policies.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com.