Nine hundred dollars a child. That was the going rate, according to federal prosecutors, for carrying a child across the bridge from Juárez into El Paso. Some of those children were 5 years old. Some were given marijuana gummies before the trip so they’d be too groggy to answer questions at the port. One of them ended up in an El Paso hospital with marijuana poisoning.
This week, the two people prosecutors say ran the operation, Susana Guadian and Daniel Guadian, were extradited from Mexico and arraigned in federal court. I’m glad they’re here. I spent years working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and I’ve seen what happens to children who get moved like cattle. But two arrests don’t fix what made those children worth $900 apiece, and Congress has had years to deal with that.
