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ICE agents tracked down a smuggler who separated a 1-year-old girl from her mother as they tried to make their way deeper into the U.S., arresting the smuggler and reuniting the family.

The Mexican woman and her 11-year-old son were apprehended by Border Patrol agents in western Texas on Saturday, according to court documents. Thats when the mother revealed her daughter had also been with them but had been separated in Mexico so the baby could be smuggled through a border crossing rather than trekked through the desert.

Agents searched the mothers phone and found details on the smuggling operation, including a picture of a bus ticket that had apparently been bought for the infant showing she was to be taken from El Paso to Dallas.

Agents from Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, stepped in to help. They spotted a woman carrying a small child show up just as the bus was getting ready to depart.

Agents say the woman, identified as Rubye Ramos, at first insisted the baby was hers and presented a birth certificate for a 4-year-old. When agents told her they knew the child wasnt hers, they said she broke down in tears and handed the baby over, acknowledging it wasnt hers.

This is one more example of the callous and ruthless tactics used by transnational criminal organizations that often use the most vulnerable migrants children as a commodity, said Gloria I. Chavez, chief patrol agent in the Border Patrols El Paso sector.

Ms. Ramos faces a human smuggling charge.

She was ordered held without bond until a detention hearing later this week.

She is a U.S. citizen but lives in Mexico, and prosecutors argued she couldnt be counted on to remain in the U.S. unless she was detained.

The Trump administration drew attention several years back for its zero-tolerance border policy, which had the effect and critics argued the intended consequence of separating illegal immigrant families caught at the border.

The parents were arrested and since there are no family facilities in federal jails, the children were placed in the case of the Health and Human Services Department. But the government failed to reunite the families once the parents were out of the criminal justice system often a matter of just a day or two.

Thousands of families were separated and authorities say hundreds remain so today, four years later.

The border case presents the other side of that coin parents who voluntarily separate from their children to make an illegal entry into the U.S.

Smugglers will sometimes decide for their own reasons that a family shouldnt enter or be transported together, and split children from adults with the intention to reunite them at a destination deeper in the U.S.

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ICE reunites illegal immigrant mother with baby held by smuggler - Washington Times