Texas DPS Rescues Three Missing and Endangered Children

January 15, 2020

EL PASO – January 9th 2020, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and multiple agencies worked together to locate and ultimately rescue four children who were kidnapped and taken to Mexico. The four children, five months, one, two, and three years of age, were returned to the United States after being taken to Mexico by their mother, Biridiana Saenz, 28, in defiance of court ordered custody by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. 

Saenz was being sought in reference to warrant from the Texas DPS Criminal Investigations Division for kidnapping her children and transporting them into Mexico, which violated an August 2019 court order. Saenz fled to Mexico to join the father of the children, Johnnie Lee Carter. Carter had previously fled to Mexico to evade arrest for warrants out of Odessa, Ector County, for assault and injury to one of the children that occurred in September 2018. Carter is also wanted in El Paso County for additional charges. 

Texas DPS Criminal Investigations Division Special Agents, with the assistance of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force, Customs and Border Protection-Office of Field Operations, and the Comisión Estatal de Seguridad del Estado de Chihuahua en Cd. Juárez  were able to locate Biridiana Saenz and recover all four children. After all five individuals returned to the U.S., Saenz was arrested and charged with kidnapping and booked into the El Paso County Jail. 

This investigation is ongoing, and no additional information is available at this time.

### (DPS-West Texas Region)