Kid Smugglers Busted

By Rachelle Bowden in News on Jul 22, 2004 4:33PM

Four Chicagoans, Carmen Hernandez, Efrain Rendon, Joanne Rendon, and Henry Bolivar Rendon-Arizaga, have been charged in an alleged scheme to smuggle Ecuadorian kids into the US with fraudulent passports. Parents here obtained authentic passports in the names of their real children and photos of the children to be smuggled. For doing this they were paid $300/smuggled kid.

Hernandez says that she has been smuggling children from Ecuador into the US for about 10 years. She defends herself by saying she is helping starving & sick South American children get into the US for medical treatment without going through immigration channels. A cooperating government witness says he obtained about 200 US passports since 2000.