Border Smugglers Used Drug-Laced Candy on Children as Young as Five

They drugged children with THC candy to get them across the border. Let that sink in for a moment. Not teenagers who might’ve known what was happening. Kids as young as five years old, handed what they thought were treats, only to be sedated and smuggled into the United States like contraband.

Manuel Valenzuela got five years in federal prison this week, and honestly, that feels light considering what prosecutors laid out. The 35-year-old Mexican national pleaded guilty to running a smuggling operation that moved unaccompanied children from Juárez into El Paso. The method? Give them THC-laced candy, wait for them to get drowsy and compliant, then march them through border checkpoints while pretending to be their parents. One child ended up hospitalized with THC poisoning. A five-year-old.

This isn’t some abstract policy debate about immigration reform or border security funding. This is about criminals who looked at vulnerable children and saw dollar signs. They saw an opportunity to exploit the chaos at our southern border, and they took it without a second thought about the lives they were destroying.

The scheme worked like this. Smugglers would present U.S. identification documents to border officers while falsely claiming the sedated children were their own. Once across, they’d transport the kids to El Paso and presumably hand them off to whoever was paying for the service. Four people got charged in this operation last year, moving children between ages 5 and 13 like they were packages on a delivery route.

Assistant Attorney General Tysen Duva got it right when he called this heinous. You know what strikes me about his statement? The part about needing to sedate children under the guise of candy. That’s not just criminal. That’s evil dressed up in a wrapper that says “trust me.” These kids had no idea what was happening to them. They probably thought some nice adult was being kind, offering them a treat before a long journey.

The border crisis creates opportunities for predators. Always has, always will. When you have weak enforcement, inconsistent policies, and a system that rewards illegal entry, you’re basically putting out a welcome mat for transnational criminal organizations. They thrive in chaos. They profit from loopholes. And they absolutely do not care about human life and safety, as Ryan McRae from Homeland Security Investigations pointed out.

Think about the calculation these smugglers made. They needed kids to stay quiet and compliant during border crossings. Regular candy wouldn’t cut it because children get restless, ask questions, maybe cry for their real parents. So they turned to THC, a psychoactive substance that has no business being in a child’s system. The fact that one kid ended up hospitalized tells you everything about how reckless this operation was. They weren’t measuring doses carefully. They weren’t concerned about adverse reactions. They just wanted results.

This case also highlights something we don’t talk about enough. The Biden administration spent four years ignoring warnings about migrant children at risk. The current DHS is now saying they’re going to “move heaven and hell” to address what the previous administration let slide. That’s not partisan talking points. That’s documented reality. When you signal that the border is effectively open, when you scale back enforcement, when you treat immigration law like a suggestion rather than a requirement, you create the conditions for this kind of exploitation.

Valenzuela and his crew transported these children for financial gain. That’s the charge he pleaded guilty to, among others. Financial gain. They got paid to drug kids and lie to federal officers. And somewhere out there are the people who hired them, the ones who wanted these children brought across badly enough to pay smugglers who’d resort to sedation.

Five years in federal prison sends a message, sure. But is it enough? Will it deter the next group of smugglers looking at the southern border and seeing opportunity? I’m skeptical. The profit margins in human smuggling are enormous, and the risk calculation only changes when enforcement becomes consistent and severe.

The Criminal Division says it’ll put an end to this conduct, that protecting children and keeping borders safe go hand in hand. They’re right about that connection. You can’t have one without the other. A secure border isn’t just about preventing illegal entry. It’s about stopping the criminals who view chaos as their business model and children as their merchandise.

This story should make you angry. It should make every parent reading this feel sick. Because those could’ve been our kids, if circumstances were different. They were someone’s kids, handed off to strangers who saw them as nothing more than a payday worth sedating.

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