Texas officials said several young girls’ whereabouts are unknown after they were smuggled into the country in a “chilling” child smuggling ring.

Vanessa Valadez, 23, pleaded guilty to pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to transport into the United States an undocumented alien, according to court records filed Sept. 20.

McClatchy News reached out to Valadez’s attorney for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Valadez was a part of a child smuggling ring with other family members between August to September 2023, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas. The members would smuggle non-citizen children , all under five years old into the U.S. from Mexico, officials said.

On Sept. 19, 2023, a young girl was taken from a stash house and smuggled into the country, then handed off to Valadez in downtown Laredo, according to officials. From there, co-conspirators took the girl further into the U.S. and delivered her to “unknown people,” officials said.

Two days later, on Sept. 21, members of the smuggling ring tried to smuggle another young girl into the country, but were caught during a routine border inspection, the release said.

“To carry out their scheme, co-conspirators had sedated the girl with melatonin gummies and used an unlawfully obtained birth certificate to deceive authorities into believing the girl was a family member,” officials said.

At least four other girls were smuggled into the country by the ring. Three of those girls have not been unidentified, and their whereabouts are unknown, officials said.

“The investigation revealed one of the co-conspirators sent a text message and an image depicting an unconscious child and a caption, ‘La noquiamos con unas gomitas,’ translated in English as ‘we knocked her out with some gummies,’” officials said in the release.

Birth certificates belonging to U.S. citizen children were used so members of the ring could pose as a family when crossing the border into the U.S., officials said. Melatonin gummies were used to sedate the children.

“This smuggling case ranks among the most chilling we’ve ever seen — involving the systematic trade of transporting young children to unknown final destinations,” U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani said.

Five other people have entered guilty pleas in connection to the case, according to officials.

A judge will sentence Valadez in January, and she could face up to 10 years in prison.

Laredo is roughly a 160-mile drive south of San Antonio.

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