A woman from Albuquerque pled guilty to federal drug charges on Wednesday in a case brought to light by the fatal overdose of her sons’ father at Dallas Love Field Airport in 2022.
Magdalena Silva Banuelos, 47, agreed to a plea deal in which she will be sentenced to 12 years in federal prison, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. Per the agreement, she admitted to using her sons — aged 8 and 10 at the time — as fentanyl mules on a flight from Albuquerque to Dallas on May 31, 2022.
As previously covered by The Dallas Express, the boys’ father was seen rifling through their belongings when he picked them up from the gate. Surveillance video also shows him entering the airport restroom at around 10:26 p.m., where he overdosed and died in a bathroom stall.
Fentanyl is a potent synthetic opioid that is highly addictive yet cheap to manufacture, making it a cartel drug of choice. Texas authorities have worked to curb the illicit traffic of fentanyl, with lawmakers enhancing the penalties for those peddling fatal doses, allowing prosecutors to pursue murder charges, as covered by The Dallas Express.
Silva Banuelos was aware of the risk when she hid over a gram of fentanyl in a Clinique brand makeup container for her ex-husband, as text messages exchanged between them reveal.
“Hey you need to be careful … Just one and then wait you’ll see. Just one,” she wrote.
He replied that he would, yet she insisted once more.
“No passing out on the kitchen floor,” she wrote. “Seriously you could [overdose]. No dying on the kitchen floor. … It’s going to f**k you up!!!”
Just 2 mg of fentanyl can constitute a fatal dose, with the Drug Enforcement Agency finding in analyses that seized pills can contain anywhere between 0.02 and 5.1 mg.
“This case is a double tragedy: A pair of young boys lost one parent to drugs and the other to the criminal justice system,” said U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton in a statement on the Silva Banuelos case.
“This defendant allowed her two young sons to fly more than 500 miles cross-country with a highly lethal synthetic opioid stashed inside their suitcase, knowing full well how dangerous it was. These boys stood nearby as their father suffered a fatal overdose after ingesting it. The Justice Department will continue to fight until fentanyl is eradicated from our streets,” she said.
Drug crime in Dallas has already risen this year compared to the year prior, with 1,922 offenses logged as of March 6 compared to 1,837 in 2023 over the same period, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard.
A considerable share of these offenses occurred in Downtown Dallas, which regularly logs more reports of crime than Fort Worth’s city center. Last month, Downtown Dallas had 61 times the number of motor vehicle thefts and 17 times the number of assaults as downtown Fort Worth.
While Fort Worth patrols its downtown area with a dedicated police unit and private security officers, the Dallas Police Department fields only around 3,000 officers across the whole city. However, a City report recommended a force of 4,000 officers in order to adequately address public safety needs in a city the size of Dallas.
Dallas City Council recently voted in a DPD budget of $654 million for the fiscal year, spending much less taxpayer money on law enforcement than other high-crime jurisdictions, like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.
