Border security

Border Patrol: Cartels use kids to divert agents

Drug cartels bring unaccompanied children to the Rio Grande valley to serve as diversions that distract border security officials from smugglers and drug traffickers, according to a Border Patrol union official.

"The unaccompanied minors could have walked right up to the Port of Entry and asked for asylum," Brandon Judd, National Border Patrol Council official, told a House Judiciary subcommittee panel in prepared testimony on Thursday. "Why did the cartels drive them to the middle of the desert and then have them cross over the Rio Grande only to surrender to the first Border Patrol agent they came across? The reason is that it completely tied up our manpower and allowed the cartels to smuggle whatever they wanted across our border."