A Guatemalan man allegedly paid a family the equivalent of $130 to “rent” their eight-year-old son so that he could go to the U.S. as a “family,” federal prosecutors told a Tucson grand jury in March. He also allegedly paid another $130 (about 1,000 quetzales) to another person who created a false birth certificate for the child.

In a federal indictment reported on by Tucson.com, Maynor Velasquez Molina sought out a Guatemalan child he could use to get into the U.S. because he was told that would be “easier to get into the United States with a child,” a federal agent stated in a criminal complaint. Velasquez crossed the border with the young boy as part of a large group of 101 migrants who illegally crossed the border on February 18 just west of the Lukeville Port of Entry, the Arizona news outlet reported.

They made the illegal border crossing after traveling across Mexico by bus, the special agent stated. After being processed in the Tucson Sector, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents began talking to the man and eventually learned he paid for the use of the boy and for the false documents used in the smuggling case.

The grand jury returned an indictment on March 27 on a charge of human smuggling, Tucson.com stated.

Velasquez is not alone in his efforts to cheat the U.S. immigration and asylum system. Since October 1, 2018, Border Patrol officials in the Yuma Sector reported more than 700 fraudulent family cases, the news outlet reported. Some of those alleged fraudulent cases involve a migrant claiming to be an unaccompanied minor when they are actually an adult. Still others involved misrepresenting the relations between two travelers. – READ MORE