A case out of Texas has a federal judge asking just which side of the law the Department of Homeland Security is working for.
United States District Judge for the Southern District of Texas Brownsville Division Andrew S. Hanen rebuked DHS for helping to deliver an illegal immigrant minor — detained at the border with her human smuggler — to her illegal immigrant mother living in Virginia.
Homeland Security “successfully complet[ed] the mission of the criminal conspiracy” to smuggle the child across the border to her parent, the judge wrote in an order issued on Dec. 13.
The mother, Patricia Elizabeth Salmeron Santos, had agreed to pay $8,500 to have human smugglers bring her child from El Salvador to Virginia.
The smuggler, Mirtha Veronica Nava-Martinez, was arrested and the child detained at a Texas border checkpoint when they were caught trying to use a birth certificate that belonged to Nava-Martinez’s daughter.
Nava-Martinez, a resident alien, also had a prior felony for food-stamp fraud in 2011.
“Despite this setback, the goal of the conspiracy was completed thanks to the actions of the United States Government,” Hanen wrote. “This Court is quite concerned with the apparent policy of the Department of Homeland Security (hereinafter ‘DHS’) of completing the criminal mission of individuals who are violating the border security of the United States.”
“Customs and Border Protection agents stopped the Defendant at the border inspection point. She was arrested, and the child was taken into custody. The DHS officials were notified that Salmeron Santos instigated this illegal conduct,” the judge continued. “Yet, instead of arresting Salmeron Santos for instigating the conspiracy to violate our border security laws, the DHS delivered the child to her — thus successfully completing the mission of the criminal conspiracy. It did not arrest her. It did not prosecute her. It did not even initiate deportation proceedings for her. The DHS policy is a dangerous course of action.”
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