daughter

Deysi Vargas’ daughter was nearly 2½ when she took her first steps.

The girl was a year delayed because she had spent most of her short life in a hospital in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, tethered to feeding tubes 24 hours a day. She has short bowel syndrome, a rare condition that prevents her body from completely absorbing the nutrients of regular food.

Vargas and her husband were desperate to get their daughter, whom The Times is identifying by her initials, S.G.V., better medical care. In 2023, they received temporary humanitarian permission to enter the U.S. legally through Tijuana.

Now in Bakersfield, the family received notice last month that their legal status had been terminated. The letter warned them: “It is in your best interest to avoid deportation and leave the United States of your own accord.”

But doing so would put S.G.V., now a bubbly 4-year-old, at immediate risk of death.

“This is a textbook example of medical need,” said the family’s attorney, Rebecca Brown, of the pro bono legal firm Public Counsel. “This child will die and there’s no sense for that to happen. It would just be a cruel sacrifice.”

A spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services declined to comment.

S.G.V.’s medication is stored in a small refrigerator.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where the girl regularly receives treatment, declined to comment. But in a letter requested by the family, Dr. John Arsenault of CHLA wrote that he sees the girl every six weeks.

If there is an interruption in her daily nutrition system, called Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN), the doctor wrote, “this could be fatal within a matter of days.”

“As such, patients on home TPN are not allowed to leave the country because the infrastructure to provide TPN or provide immediate intervention if there is a problem with IV access depends on our program’s utilization of U.S.-based healthcare resources and does not transfer across borders,” Arsenault wrote.

Vargas, 28, is from the Mexican state of Oaxaca; her husband, 34, is from Colombia. They met in Cancun, where they were working. Just before S.G.V. was born, the couple moved to nearby Playa del Carmen so her husband could work as an Uber driver.

The girl was born a month premature and quickly taken to intensive care. After doctors discovered her condition, she underwent six surgeries to fix an intestinal blockage. But Vargas said the doctors cut out too much, and the girl was left with short bowels. She experienced repeated blood infections, including one that nearly killed her.

The girl’s weight fluctuated severely. One month, she would look emaciated, her tiny limbs and bulging stomach incongruous with the family’s relative access to resources. Another month, she was as round-cheeked as any other baby.

When S.G.V. was 7 months old, a doctor suggested that the family relocate to Mexico City, where pediatric care for short bowel syndrome was the best in the country. But although her condition initially improved, the blood infections continued.

Unable to work, Vargas spent all day, every day, at the hospital with her daughter. Some days, she said, nurses would mistakenly administer the wrong medication to S.G.V. Other days, Vargas would arrive to find that her daughter had thrown up on herself overnight and no one had cleaned her up.

As part of her daily routine, Deysi Vargas runs a saline solution through her daughter’s intravenous line.

Vargas tried to keep a watchful eye over her daughter. Even so, she said a nurse once mistakenly sped up S.G.V.’s nutrition system, causing her to quickly pee it out. The girl became dehydrated and her glucose levels skyrocketed before doctors whisked her to intensive care, where her condition stabilized.

S.G.V. as a baby, taken in Mexico before treatment for short bowel syndrome.

(Deysi Vargas)

Vargas had read about children similar to her daughter going on to have normal lives in other countries. In Mexico, her daughter was being kept alive — but at 2, her condition had not improved.

So when Vargas learned that the Biden administration had begun offering migrants appointments with border agents through a phone application called CBP One, she signed up. Those let in received two-year protection from deportation and work permits.

With the appointment set for July 31, 2023, Vargas and her family set out for Tijuana two days earlier. She carefully carried her daughter out of the hospital, her nutrition bags still connected intravenously.

Her husband told agents that he had once been kidnapped by cartel members in Mexico who extorted money and threatened to kill him. They also looked at the girl, whose vulnerable condition was obvious.

“God knew she needed better treatment,” Vargas said. “When we got to the entrance, they saw her and asked us if we needed medical help.”

By that afternoon, the family had been whisked to Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego.

S.G.V. quickly improved. Although she once was hooked up 24 hours a day to the feeding system that delivered nutrients directly into the bloodstream, doctors began weaning her off as her intestines got stronger.

The Trump administration has revoked the family’s humanitarian parole that they received in 2023 to treat the 4-year-old girl’s short bowel syndrome. Doctors say she could die within days without treatment.

A year later, doctors referred her to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, which has one of the top-ranked gastroenterology programs in the country.

Both of her parents worked, holding down odd jobs, and by September 2024, the family had settled in Bakersfield and S.G.V. was discharged from the hospital.

For the first time, S.G.V. experienced the outside world. At Walmart, her eyes widened from the shopping cart and she and her mom strolled the aisles.

“It was incredible,” Vargas said. “I had waited so long for doctors to tell me, ‘Ma’am, your daughter is OK now. She can go home.’”

Now, the girl spends 14 hours each night hooked up to the intravenous feeding system. She wears a backpack to take it on the go.

Four times a day, for an hour, her mom administers a different type of nutrition that goes straight into her stomach through a gastric tube. When the girl goes to preschool, she takes a larger backpack containing the milky fluid, and the school nurse administers her noon feeding.

Before S.G.V. takes a shower, Vargas unplugs her IV tubes, flushes them with saline and tapes a plastic sheet over her chest to keep water from getting in and infecting the area.

On a recent morning, Vargas dressed the girl in pink leggings, a Hello Kitty T-shirt and black Puma sneakers. As they left hand-in-hand for preschool, S.G.V.’s curly black hair was still wet and the adult-size backpack dangled behind her knees as she walked.

S.G.V.’s care is covered through Medi-Cal. But life in the U.S. isn’t cheap.

Their modest living room contains little more than a hot plate on a folding table, a mini-fridge, a single chair and an IV bag stand. With no full kitchen, Vargas mostly makes sandwiches or soups. The fridge is filled with S.G.V.’s nutrition packs.

Vargas recently found steady work cleaning a restaurant. Finally, she thought, the family was achieving a sense of stability.

Then in April she received the notice from immigration authorities. This month, she received a notice terminating her employment authorization.

Vargas said she and her husband sometimes eat just once a day after paying rent and utilities, as well as for diapers and other necessities. Her husband is currently unemployed because of an injury, and she fears that losing her income could leave them homeless.

The thought of being forced by immigration agents to return to Mexico terrifies Vargas.

“I know the treatment they have there for her is not adequate, because we already lived it,” she said. “Those were bad times. Here she is living the most normal life possible.”

If not for her daughter’s medical condition, Vargas said, they probably would still be in Mexico. They want to stay only for as long as the girl needs treatment. Exactly how long that could be is unclear, but the couple are hopeful that their child’s condition will improve enough that she stops requiring supplemental nutrition.

Brown, their lawyer, submitted a petition for a continuation of their temporary humanitarian legal status based on S.G.V.’s medical condition. She believes the family’s legal status was prematurely terminated by mistake.

President Trump lambasted Biden over his broad expansion of programs allowing humanitarian entry, known as parole. On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order to ensure that the discretionary authority be “exercised on only a case-by-case basis” for urgent humanitarian reasons or a significant public benefit.

Deysi Vargas and her daughter, S.G.V., walk about 15 minutes to the child’s preschool.

“This is the intended purpose — to help the most vulnerable who need attention here,” Brown said. “We can avoid having harmed the child and the family.”

Although Trump said on the campaign trail that he would target criminals for deportation, his administration quickly began revoking the legal status of immigrants who have no criminal history.

The Trump administration has stripped humanitarian protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants who entered the U.S. under various Biden-era programs. Thousands of people who similarly entered the country using the CBP One app received notices from the federal government around the same time Vargas did, ordering them to leave voluntarily or face criminal prosecution and other legal actions.

The same phone app that Vargas used to enter the country has since been turned into CBP Home, to help immigrants such as her self-deport. If not, it says, “the federal government will find you.”

Times staff photographer Myung J. Chun in Bakersfield contributed to this report.

Josh O’Connor in the movie “The Mastermind.”

(Festival de Cannes)

Leave it to Kelly Reichardt, who turned Michelle Williams into a seething sculptor with frenemy issues in “Showing Up,” to make the gentlest, most self-deprecating heist movie imaginable. As such, she’s invented a whole new genre. The year is 1970 but don’t expect anything Scorsesian to go down here. Rather, this one’s about a half-smart art thief (Josh O’Connor, leaning into loser vibes) who, after snatching canvases of a lesser-known modernist from an understaffed Massachusetts museum, suffers grievously as his plan unravels. Reichardt, herself the daughter of law enforcement, is more interested in the aftermath: hypnotically awkward kitchen conversations with disappointed family members who won’t lend him any more money and would rather he just clear out. (The exquisite period-perfect cast includes Alana Haim, Bill Camp, Hope Davis and John Magaro.) Danny Ocean types need not apply, but if you hear skittering jazz music as the soundtrack of desperation, your new favorite comedy is here. — JR

My favorite books fall into one of two categories: novels that immerse me in another world, or nonfiction works that transform how I see our world.

When I read the latter, I share what I learned from the book with my partner for months afterward. She jokes that these books become my personality, but it’s not really a joke. In grad school, a professor asked us to each share a fun fact about ourselves, and I shared that my favorite book is about parking minimums. (I was studying business, not urban planning, so no one else seemed to find this very “fun.”)

When given the chance to write this newsletter, I knew I had to convince subscribers to check out “Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World” by Henry Grabar. True to the title, it will change how you see the world — it did for me, at least.

Today, I talk to Grabar about why he became fascinated with parking policy, whether L.A. can pull off a car-free Summer Olympics in 2028 and how the current White House administration is affecting the future of American transportation. I also share some of my other favorite books about transportation and urban planning before checking out the latest news in the book world.

✍️ Author Chat

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

You cover various urban issues for Slate. Was there a book that inspired your interest in these topics?

The first thing I read about city planning that made me feel like this was a real subject of inquiry and study was Jane Jacobs’ famous book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” She even has a passage about parking lots as “border vacuums” and the way that they kind of suck the life out of the surrounding streets. I read that when I was probably 17.

My direct inspiration for “Paved Paradise” came more out of my reporting for Slate. It just seemed that beneath every single subject, there was a story about parking. Then I learned that many people in the field had already devoted their careers to studying parking. But that just meant there was a lot of interesting material there and a big gap between what professionals understood about the importance of parking and what the general public saw as its role.

‘Paved Paradise,’ by Henry Grabar

(Penguin Press)

You mentioned Jane Jacobs’ book. What are some of your lesser-known favorite books about transportation and urban planning?

“Family Properties” by Beryl Satter is a great book about race and housing in Chicago.

“Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age” by Lizabeth Cullen is a biography, but it’s also an urban renewal history that offers an interesting and nuanced perspective on the aims of the urban renewers.

“The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York” by Suleiman Osman holds many interesting lessons for our cities today.

As a famously sprawling city, L.A. features prominently in Paved Paradise. Since the book came out, city leaders have promoted the idea of a car-free Olympics. Do you think that’s feasible?

That would be great. I hope they stick to that aim. It’s going to be challenging, of course, but at the same time, if there’s one thing we know about mega-events, it’s just very, very difficult on a spatial level to get everybody where they’re going if everyone arrives in a single-family vehicle.

I was at the Olympics in Paris last year, where I met [L.A. Mayor] Karen Bass very briefly. She seemed inspired by what was happening there. But it’s hard to make a point-by-point comparison between Paris and Los Angeles because they’re such different cities. At the same time, I do think planners in L.A. grasp this will be a much more fun event if it can summon some of that public-spiritedness that was on display in Paris, where the venues and the fans zones were all connected, rather than these isolated sites that are only accessed by car.

Henry Grabar’s ‘Paved Paradise’ diagnoses the blight of parking.

(Lisa Larson-Walker)

Since you published your book, Donald Trump has returned to the White House. To what degree does the federal government affect how much, at a city level, we are able to chip away at our parking-dependent infrastructure?

The federal government is a huge player in the way our cities and streets look. There are a lot of city and county transportation departments wondering what will happen with these projects where money was allocated by Washington or they were expecting it to be allocated later.

If there’s any silver lining to it, to accomplish their transportation goals, cities are going to have to do more with less and rethink some of the policy decisions they’ve taken for granted that are in their control, like parking policy.

Is there another topic in this realm that you hope to turn into a book someday?

I’m working on another book that follows the construction of a series of multifamily buildings from start to finish. By embedding with these projects as they make their way through the acquisition of the land, the design of the building, the zoning, the permitting, the financing and finally the construction, I’ll be able to identify and illuminate some of the barriers to having enough housing that go beyond whether it is permitted by zoning, which I know is a hot topic in California.

I’m trying to look across the country because this is increasingly a national problem, and there are variations from place to place in the issues that come into play.

📚 Book Recs

Now for some other books that have, to varying degrees, become my personality…

“Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet” explains how highways affect wildlife in ways both obvious (roadkill) and obscure (traffic noise pushing birds away from their habitats). Author Ben Goldfarb also highlights the creative solutions road ecologists are coming up with to help animals navigate our car-centric world.

If you’ve had an address your whole life, you’ve probably never thought much about it. “The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power” changed that for me. Author Deirdre Mask digs into the consequences of not having an address, the dark reasoning behind why we began numbering homes and so much more.

In “Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About the Future of Transportation,” author Paris Marx pokes holes in many of the silver-bullet transportation solutions we have today, from autonomous vehicles to electric scooters, arguing these efforts often overlook the most vulnerable in our society and sometimes create more problems than they solve.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

President Biden at a campaign rally in Raleigh, N.C..

(Matt Kelley / Associated Press)

Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s buzzy book about Joe Biden’s diminished capacities and the associated cover-up is “reads like a Shakespearean drama on steroids,” Leigh Haber writes in her review of “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.” Times television and media business reporter Stephen Battaglio spoke with Tapper about the book. “I have never experienced the ability to get behind the scenes in so many different rooms as for these recountings as I was for this book,” the CNN anchor said. “I felt like people needed to get this off their chest. It was almost like they were unburdening themselves.”

Media mogul Barry Diller’s memoir, “Who Knew,” hit shelves this week. Here are the four biggest revelations.

In his new book, “Is a River Alive?,” Robert Macfarlane questions the way we treat nature by visiting three threatened rivers in different parts of the world.

With his 40th novel, “Nightshade,” out this week, author and former Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Connelly shared what keeps him writing at 68 years old.

In his new book, “Diet, Drugs, and Dopamine: The New Science of Achieving a Healthy Weight,” David A. Kessler argues Big Food has purposefully engineered ultraprocessed foods to be addictive. The Times spoke with Kessler, a former FDA commissioner, about healthy long-term weight-loss strategies, guidelines for using GLP-1s safely, the body-positivity movement and improving lifespan.

If you haven’t gotten enough book recs by this point in the newsletter, The Times has also compiled 30 must-read books for summer.

Now we know what it takes for Jimmy Kimmel to skip a night of work: One of his babies has to have a baby.

Kimmel became a grandfather earlier this week when his oldest daughter gave birth to a girl. In his monologue Tuesday, he joked about his oldest daughter’s age.

“We were supposed to have a show last night, but we didn’t because my daughter had a baby last night. People don’t realize — people know I have two little kids,” he said. “I also have two older kids. My oldest daughter, she’s 83 years old, her name is Katie.”

He also praised Guillermo as a great doula, telling his sidekick, “You were reassuring, you were calm, your hands were so soft.” So you can tell how serious he was being.

Kimmel said it was only the second night, excluding planned vacations and the COVID-19 lockdowns, that he’d taken off in the show’s 22-year history.

Katie and Kevin Kimmel, 33 and 31, are Jimmy’s kids from his 14-year marriage to Gina Kimmel, which ended in 2002.

Kimmel’s kids from his marriage to writer Molly McNearney, whom he married in 2013, are Jane, 10, and Billy, 8. Billy was born with a heart condition that has been discussed regularly on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Katie wed Will Logsdon in 2021.

As for Katie Kimmel’s new baby, proud grandpa Jimmy said she’s “very healthy.” Then he went on to joke about her name, which he stated was Melania, then Melania Thee Stallion, then — in a phone call with his Aunt Chippy — Jo Mama, then Jo Mama Kevin Logsdon.

It was after that last one that Aunt Chippy said, “She didn’t name the baby that! You know, if you don’t stop busting my b—, I swear to God when I die I’m going to come back and haunt you!”

Kimmel then said the name was actually Brangelina, prompting Chippy to order him to hand the phone to his mother.

The baby’s actual name, though, is Patti Joan. “Joan” is in honor of Jimmy Kimmel’s mom, Katie’s paternal grandma.

The talk-show host also started riffing on things he’d learned from his grandfathers and brainstorming things he would have to teach little Patti Joan. Things like shoplifting, skipping traffic by impersonating law enforcement and shooting out one’s bottom dentures like a cash-register drawer.

“You know WD-40?” Kimmel asked the studio audience. “You have to teach them about that.”

NEW YORK — Sean “Diddy” Combs demanded $20,000 from Casandra “Cassie” Ventura’s mother and threatened to release explicit sex tapes of his longtime girlfriend when he became angry that she was dating someone else, the mother testified Tuesday at the hip-hop mogul’s sex trafficking trial.

Regina Ventura said she felt “physically sick” when she received an email from Cassie in late 2011 saying Combs was planning to release two explicit videos of her and send someone to hurt her and the man she was seeing, rapper Kid Cudi.

“I did not understand a lot of it. The sex tapes threw me,” Ventura told the Manhattan federal court.

Ventura, of New London, Conn., said she then received a demand from Combs for $20,000 “to recoup money he had spent on her because he was unhappy she was in a relationship with Kid Cudi.”

“He was angry that he had spent money on her and she went with another person,” she said.

Ventura said she used a home equity loan to make the payment because “I was scared for my daughter’s safety.” Days later, she said, the money was returned, and before long, Cassie was dating Combs again.

Ventura testified for less than a half-hour, in part because defense attorney Marc Agnifilo declined to cross-examine her. During her testimony, the jury was shown photographs of bruises on Cassie’s body that Ventura testified were taken when her daughter came home for Christmas in 2011.

Before the jury arrived Tuesday, Agnifilo tried to persuade Judge Arun Subramanian to disallow the testimony, saying it was “purely prejudicial” because it illustrated the wide difference between the financial status of the Ventura family and Combs. The judge allowed it though, saying the threats to release sex tapes and harm Cassie made it an instance of “potential extortion.”

The testimony came during the second week of the trial, which is scheduled to last up to two months. If convicted of the charges he faces, including racketeering, the Bad Boy Records founder could be sentenced to at least 15 years in prison.

Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he used threats and his powerful position in the hip-hop world to abuse women and others, and force Cassie to take part in drug-fueled sexual performances with other men that she said left her too drained to pursue her singing career.

Earlier Tuesday, David James, Combs’ personal assistant from 2007 to 2009, told the court that the job seemed to come with increasing perils. He said he quit when he realized that his life had been put in danger after he was forced to drive a car in which an angry Combs sat in the back seat with three handguns on his lap.

James said his job sometimes required him to ensure that hotel rooms where Combs stayed under the name “Frank Black” were stocked with the musician’s comforts, including fresh underwear, an iPod, apple sauce, vodka, baby oil, Viagra and condoms.

There were also surprising moments, James said, like one in 2008 when Combs asked him to bring an iPod from his Miami home to a hotel room. Upon entering, James said he saw Cassie on the bed with a white comforter pulled up to her neck and an unfamiliar naked man running from the room.

Another time, he said Combs summoned him to his office to show him video he’d recorded at a party of James dancing wildly and told him: “OK. I’m going to keep this footage in case I ever need it.” James said he took it as a threat to keep him in line.

Cassie testified last week that Combs threatened to release videos of her having sex with male sex workers during so-called freak-offs Combs orchestrated if she didn’t do as he said.

James also described being required to take lie detector tests twice when Combs was trying to find out who stole cash in one instance and a watch in another.

He said Combs was on drugs nearly every day, often taking Percocet by day and ecstasy by night. When he stocked Combs’ hotel rooms, he said, drugs were in a bag dropped off by security, including the pill meant to look like then-President Obama.

The moment when James saw the three guns on Combs’ lap came when he testified that he was involved in Combs’ attempt to confront his music industry rival Suge Knight at a Los Angeles diner in November 2008 — an incident that Cassie also testified about. He said he quit soon afterward.

“I was real shook up by it,” James testified. “This was the first time being Mr. Combs’ assistant that I realized my life was in danger.”

Before Tuesday’s lunch break, Sharay Hayes, an exotic dancer known as “The Punisher,” testified that Combs and Cassie brought him into the freak-offs world. He said a woman — Cassie using a pseudonym — called and told him it was her birthday and that her husband said she should hire a dancer.

Hayes said he arrived at a Manhattan hotel room expecting to perform a striptease for a small group of people but instead found the woman who hired him — whom he later found out was Cassie — alone with an otherwise naked man who hid his face with a burqa-like cloth. That man, he said, turned out to be Combs.

Hayes recalled seeing bottles of baby oil in bowls of water and getting handed a stack of $800 in cash. Later, after Combs watched him have a sexual encounter with Cassie, he said he was handed an additional $1,200. He said he was a fan of Combs but didn’t realize it was him in the room until a subsequent encounter at another hotel where the message on the TV screen said: “Essex House would like to welcome Mr. Sean Combs.”

Sisak and Neumeister write for the Associated Press.

THE distraught father of drugs charge teenager Bella Culley has vowed to stand by his daughter – amid new fears Far East drugs gangs are targeting British backpackers.

Bella, 18, is on remand in a grim jail following her arrest in Georgia’s Tbilisi airport with a suitcase of cannabis after going missing 4,000 miles away in Thailand.

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Bella’s flight took off from the same Bangkok airport within hours of another pretty British trafficking suspect arrested with £1.2 million of a cannabis-related drug in Sri Lanka.

Former air stewardess Charlotte May Lee, 21, was in a gruesome Sri Lankan jail cell last night awaiting a court appearance.

Their arrests have sparked fears that Thai gangs may be hoodwinking vulnerable British backpackers into ferrying their drugs after a crackdown on postal trafficking.

Bella was facing at least nine months on remand in a grim Soviet-era jail alongside hardened criminals.

She had joked online of “Bonnie and Clyde” hijinks while showing off cash wads in the Far East and was pictured smoking a spliff.

Bella’s family from Billingham, County Durham are convinced she was preyed upon after flying to the Far East to party with a mystery man feared to have hooked her up with drugs runners.

Her dad Niel – a Vietnam-based oil rig electrician – flew to Tbilisi last week desperate for answers after tearful Bella told a court that she was pregnant.

But he has yet to meet his daughter within the drab confines of No5 Women’s Penitentiary on the outskirts of the Georgian capital and remains baffled by her plight.

Asked about his plans after arriving in Tbilisi, Mr Culley, 49, told The Sun today: “I can’t say anything but I will be here for as long as it takes.

“I obviously have no experience in dealing with situations like this and it’s very difficult.”

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Appearing shaky as he puffed on a cigarette, the anxious dad at one point appeared ready to make a statement when asked how his daughter was bearing up in prison.

But he broke off to confer with Bella’s aunt Kerrie Culley – who is supporting him in Georgia – and returned shaking his head.

He added: “I’m being advised by the British Embassy and can’t comment at the moment.

“But that may change in the future depending on what happens.”

Fears are growing that a Thai drugs gang is preying on British backpackers this summer as Charlotte became the second Brit flying out of Bangkok to be arrested within days.

She was detained at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka on Monday – the day after Bella’s arrest – where police say she had a huge stash of kush – a synthetic strain of cannabis.

Charlotte from Chipstead, Surrey was last night locked in a cell with 20 other prisoners with barely room to lie down as she awaited a court hearing.

Bella took off first from Bangkok on a 20-hour flight via Sharjah in the UAE to Georgia while Charlotte left later on a three-hour direct flight to Sri Lanka.

Both girls departed from the Thai capital during the Royal Ploughing Ceremony weekend – one of the busiest festivals of the year when airports are crammed with tourists.

It is believed to have provided a prime opportunity for traffickers to operate mules – particularly attractive young Britons who arouse less suspicion.

The two arrests follow a huge crackdown on smugglers sending cannabis to the UK by post.

A joint operation by both countries has seen a 90 per cent in reduction in the drug being mailed to Britain since last year.

It suggests Thai gangs may now be reverting to using drug mules to ship their products instead – and targeting British backpackers.

Thailand decriminalised cannabis in 2022 which sparked a massive rise in the narcotic being posted to Britain.

The law change allowed traffickers to hoodwink trippers into believing transporting it was legal.

Thai checks of mail being shipped stopped 1.5 tonnes in the first quarter of this year – a 90 percent drop in the illicit cargo – in a drive which frustrated the gangs.

Some 800 people including 50 British nationals have been arrested in Thailand for attempted smuggling since July 2024 with over nine tonnes of cannabis seized.

Retired Georgian police chief General Jemal Janashia voiced concerns that backpackers were being targeted yesterday.

He said: “The fact that two young British women have taken off with large quantities of drugs from the same airport will interest investigators.

“They will be concerned about the possibility of a link and that Thai gangs may be attempting to recruit vulnerable British travellers.

“After the crackdown on postal drug deliveries, the Thai cartel are seeking new routes and Georgia does look like an attractive middle transit point.

“It’s relatively close, and easy to reach Europe and is visa free to European travellers.”

He added: “I feel sorry for this woman because she was clearly used and manipulated. She’s 18, she’s a foreigner, pregnant.

“All of this indicates that she was chosen deliberately, chosen carefully, she was studied.

“Whoever chose her, they knew what they were doing.”

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AT the age of three, Phil Foden’s daughter might struggle to tell the time — but Daddy has already treated her to a £10,000 Rolex.

Little True was seen wearing the pricey watch in pictures posted on her Instagram page last week.

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England and Man City ace Phil, 24, and girlfriend Rebecca Cooke run the site, which has 22,400 followers.

True is also seen kitted out in a £160 Monnalisa designer dress, a £40 bag from Hookd and a Pandora charm bracelet.

Her Rolex is identical to one worn by Kylie Jenner’s daughter Stormi, six.

Phil’s own watch collection includes a Rolex Sky Dweller and a Day Date.

The midfielder, who came on as a sub in yesterday’s FA Cup final defeat to Crystal Palace, loves spending his £200,000-a-week wages on his kids — Ronnie, five, True, and baby boy Phil Junior.

True was given a pony, Angus, at Christmas and is having riding lessons.

A source said: “True loves anything girly, sparkly — she loves fancy things. She is the little girl that wants for nothing.”

Phil recently moved the family to a mansion with a lake in the Cheshire countryside.

He was brought up on a council estate in nearby Edgeley, Stockport.

His mum, Claire, has revealed how much her son had changed recently.

She said: “The shocking thing is I hear him ordering salmon a lot now and he never used to eat that.”

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May 15 (UPI) — Authorities in western New Jersey arrested and charged a mother and stepfather after their 18-year-old daughter whom they had chained up and locked in a dog create for years escaped their home last week.

Circumstances of her escape were not made public, but authorities said the unidentified girl had fled her home Thursday and received assistance from a neighbor.

The girl told authorities that she had been physically, mentally and sexually abused by her parents since about 2018, when her mother removed her from school.

The girl’s parents, Brenda Spencer, 38, and Branndon Mosley, 41, were arrested and charged Sunday with a slew of offenses, including kidnapping, endangering the welfare of a child, criminal restraint and assault with a deadly weapon. Mosley, the stepfather, faces additional charges of sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child by sexual assault.

“This is the most abhorrent, heinous crime anyone could commit,” Camden County Prosecutor Grace MacAulay said during a press conference Wednesday.

“You see criminals all over the country doing horrific, horrible acts, whether it’s physical or sexual abuse. When it comes at the hands of a parent to a child, there’s nothing worse.”

Authorities said the 18-year-old girl told detectives that shortly after being removed from sixth grade at Spencer’s discretion to be allegedly homeschooled, she was confined to live in a dog crate, where she lived for one year, before being chained up and forced to live in a padlocked bathroom, where she was let only only when family visited.

She was also forced, at times, to live in a bare room with just a bucket to use as a toilet, according to authorities who said she informed detectives that it was armed with an alarm system that would alert the defendants if she tried to leave.

She informed police that Mosley had sexually abused her and beat her with a belt.

MacAulay told reporters that the girl was “living in squalid, filthy conditions” alongside numerous animals, including large dogs and chinchillas.

During the press conference, it was also revealed that the girl’s 13-year-old sister was also living in the same residence, though it was not stated if she was subjected to the same treatment, but that she, had also been removed from school years earlier at Spencer’s discretion to be homeschooled.

In New Jersey, parents are only required to notify the school district of their intent to homeschool their children without requirements from the state’s Department of Education to follow up or to confirm attendance or accreditation, MacAulay explained.

“Homeschooling may be the right choice for many families. Unfortunately, it can be used by others as a means to hide abuse,” she said.

MacAulay said both girls were safe but did not elaborate on their conditions as they are minors and victims of abuse.

“As you can imagine, anyone who’s been confined for a period of seven years, held in these conditions, living in squalid filth, is going to be damaged psychologically, physically, emotionally, mentally,” she said.

“And as you can appreciate when it comes to cases involving child endangerment and child abuse and sexual assault, confidentiality to protect the victims is paramount.”

Gloucester Township Police Chief David Harkins explained the several-day gap between the 18-year-old’s escape and her parents’ arrest was due to authorities not knowing the extent of the situation.

He said on Thursday when police were contacted, what the girl had described was “a domestic violence-type situation” and that “she did not want to disclose all this information.

“She did not disclose this information about being held to this level,” he said.

An investigation was conducted Thursday following the girl’s escape, but based on the information they had, their investigative authorities were limited.

“Without a corroborating victim, there’s only so much we could do,” he said. “We offered her services. We gave her some resources at that time. She was looking for homeless services.”

On Saturday, the girl contacted authorities again, at which point they learned to what degree she was being held, Harkins said.

“This is one of the most despicable cases that I’ve ever run across,” he said.

Spencer was described as unemployed, and Mosley worked as a train conductor with the SEPTA Regional Rail system.

Both defendants were being held at the Camden County Correctional Facility, pending detention hearings.