ICE, CBP, and Federal Agencies Combating Child Trafficking from Mexico

 

ICE enforcement operations are widely understood as a deportation mechanism, but the agency’s mandate extends well beyond removing illegal aliens from the country. As ICE and its partner agencies conduct raids and sweeps, they frequently uncover human-trafficking networks, rescue victims, and open new criminal investigations, including cases involving children trafficked from Mexico into the United States.

These operations are often carried out through coordinated, multi-agency task forces that bring together ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division, the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI, Customs and Border Protection, and state and local law enforcement to target exploitation networks operating across the southern border.

The scale of the trafficking problem is closely tied to the surge of unaccompanied minors entering the United States. Under the Biden-Harris administration, Customs and Border Protection encountered more than 526,000 unaccompanied alien children at the southwest border, more than twice the number encountered under the Obama and Trump administrations during comparable periods. Roughly 75 to 80 percent of these unaccompanied minors are believed to be victims of trafficking.

After these children enter the country, many disappear from government oversight. During a 2023 congressional hearing, the Department of Health and Human Services admitted it had lost contact with more than 85,000 unaccompanied children after placing them with sponsors. A Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report issued in August 2024 revised that number upward to more than 320,000 children whose whereabouts are unknown.

The same report found that an additional 290,000 children were released by HHS without being issued a notice to appear in immigration court, meaning ICE has no mechanism to monitor their location or safety. Another 32,000 children failed to appear for scheduled immigration court hearings, which represent one of the few opportunities for ICE agents to observe possible signs of trafficking or exploitation.

The U.S. State Department’s most recent Trafficking in Persons Report on Mexico documents the source-country conditions driving that pipeline. Organized criminal groups force Mexican and foreign children into sexual exploitation, as well as into roles as assassins and lookouts and into the production, transportation, and sale of drugs. Local observers reported an increase in organized criminal groups exploiting children in trafficking, with particular concern over the forced recruitment of Indigenous children, who are coerced through torture and threats of murder. Some government officials in Mexico collude with traffickers or participate directly in trafficking crimes, with corrupt immigration officials allegedly accepting payment from traffickers to facilitate the irregular entry of foreign victims into the country.

The majority of trafficking cases occur among family members, intimate partners, or acquaintances on social media, or through employment-related deception. Experts have noted an especially high prevalence of child sex trafficking in Tlaxcala, where family-run networks target and seduce girls in the community and then exploit them in Mexico or the United States.

Traffickers increasingly use social media to recruit victims. An NGO reported that more than 60 percent of victims who called Mexico’s anti-trafficking hotline were initially recruited through websites or social media platforms.

Through the efforts of the Trump administration to secure the border and discourage illegal entry, the number of unaccompanied minors entering the country has dropped from nearly 9,000 in 2024 to less than 700 in 2025.

In addition to preventing new trafficking victims from entering the country, the administration is conducting raids and arrests to catch predators and rescue children already in the United States.

In January 2026, Arizona authorities rescued an 8-year-old boy after a traffic stop in southern Arizona uncovered an alleged human trafficking plot involving a Mexican citizen possibly working for a cartel. The suspect admitted to being paid $500 to deliver the child to unknown individuals and now faces federal charges.

That same month, ICE Homeland Security Investigations agents conducting welfare checks on unaccompanied alien children placed with sponsors under the previous administration discovered sponsors in possession of child sexual abuse material, minors subjected to forced labor, and in some cases girls who were pregnant with children fathered by their alleged sponsors.

In February 2026, a week-long statewide crackdown in California called Operation Reclaim and Rebuild resulted in more than 600 arrests and the rescue of 170 people, including 74 children, some as young as 13. The operation began with a single citizen tip about a suspected residential brothel in Walnut, which led to months of surveillance and the discovery of multiple additional brothels across Los Angeles County. Victims were recovered from as far away as Illinois, Oklahoma, Missouri, and tribal lands of the Muscogee Creek Nation.

The San Diego component alone included the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, California Highway Patrol, and multiple county sheriff and district attorney offices. Also in February, under the Making America Safe Again initiative, ICE announced the arrests of criminal illegal aliens convicted of sex crimes against children, injury to a child, and drug trafficking, and lodged an arrest detainer for a Tren de Aragua gang member charged with sex trafficking and racketeering across multiple states.

In March 2026, Operation Safe Return, led by the U.S. Marshals Service in partnership with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, identified more than 50 missing children and rescued 37 of them, ranging in age from 14 to 17, across Riverside County, Northern California, Nevada, and Arizona, resulting in seven arrests. ICE announced additional arrests on March 4 and March 9 of criminal illegal aliens convicted of offenses including possession of child sexual abuse material, kidnapping for the purpose of sexual assault, and murder.

One of the most diabolical child trafficking busts during the second Trump administration was the case of Martha Alicia Mendez Aguilar, known as “La Diabla,” arrested in Juárez, Mexico, on September 2, 2025, after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterterrorism Center provided supporting intelligence.

Aguilar, affiliated with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, allegedly lured pregnant women in vulnerable or impoverished circumstances to remote locations under false pretenses, performed illegal cesarean procedures, harvested the mothers’ organs postmortem, and sold the newborns to buyers in the United States for up to 250,000 pesos, approximately $14,000 each.

At least one infant recovered in connection with the case was confirmed alive and hospitalized. The arrest was supported by the U.S. Marshals Service, FBI El Paso, the Diplomatic Security Service, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, with Mexican law enforcement and the Fiscalía Especializada en la Mujer executing the operation on the ground. Aguilar faces charges of femicide, human trafficking, and organized crime and remains in Mexican custody, while investigators continue working to identify buyers in the United States who purchased the infants.

NCTC Director Joe Kent described the scheme as “one example of what terrorist cartels will do to diversify their revenue streams and finance operations.” The CJNG was formally designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department in February 2025.

Counterterrorism operations on both sides of the border are coordinated by the Homeland Security Task Force, established under Executive Order 14159 signed by President Trump, and as a result of those expanded authorities, the NCTC has added over 21,000 cartel members and associates into its classified terrorist database, creating over 35,000 identities related to the newly designated foreign terrorist organizations.

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