Illegal immigrants are increasingly posing with children who are not their own in order to try to gain expedited entry to the U.S., multiple sources tell The Daily Caller.

A law enforcement source directly involved in apprehension told The Daily Caller officers are increasingly encountering “family units” of adult males with children of various ages. When law enforcement attempts to debrief the adult males with children, they often cannot answer even the most basic questions about their supposed children. The children also rarely appear to know details of their apparent “fathers.”

The law enforcement source cast doubt on the asylum claims that many of the illegal immigrants appear to parrot, pointing out that the vast majority of those detained are actively trying to evade authorities. Only upon their detention do they offer the exact same credible fear of returning home, most of whom say the phrase in the exact same scripted way.

The scripted manner of answer indicates to authorities that these illegal immigrants have been coached by human trafficking organizations.

A Department of Homeland Security official confirmed the widespread practice. That official lamented that DHS currently does not keep track of the specific number of adult males posing as parents. DHS Secretary Kirsten Nielsen offered a glimpse into the problem Monday morning.

“From October 2017 to this February, we have seen a staggering 315% increase in illegal aliens, fraudulently using children to pose as family units to gain entry into the country,” Nielsen revealed.

A DHS spokesman explained to TheDC how this statistic was derived, noting that there were 46 documented cases of fraud in fiscal year 2017 with 119 cases in fiscal year 2018 alone, which predates the current crisis on the border.

Caretakers on the ground have seen the same phenomenon with Sister Norma Pimentel, who works at a children shelter in South Texas, telling the Los Angeles Times, “one thing we have seen a lot of are people coming with children who are not theirs.”

A law enforcement source also described a number of troubling encounters with illegal immigrants of Mexican nationals posing as citizens from other non-contiguous countries in order to stymie authorities and deter deportation.