The current avalanche of undocumented migrants to the United States via Mexico not only exposes a humanitarian drama, but also the billion-dollar migrant trafficking in which people are treated as commodities.
Hundreds of thousands of illegal entries across the 3,200-kilometer border are recorded each year, generating $ 4.2 billion annually for these traffickers known as “coyotes” or “chickens,” according to a 2018 UN report. In 2010 the agency put these profits at $ 6.6 billion.
Like other forms of organized crime, it is controlled by drug traffickers, although the first link may be a neighbor of migrants, mostly Central Americans.
Harassed by poverty, Honduran Juan Macías (renamed) paid in March to one of these networks $ 7,000 he raised with family loans.
“They work through organizations, they call them guides; then later on the border are the cartels,” the 35-year-old told AFP at a shelter in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez, where he was expelled from the States. Units.
Now expect some migratory benefit from US President Joe Biden, or try to cross by his own means.
Macías recounts that he dealt with eight “polleros” during his trip along with about thirty migrants.
“One identified with the code when I got to the site:‘ I’m so-and-so ’this is the code’ (…) They don’t say anything, just ‘follow me’, ”he recounts.
– Criminal companies –
Traffic didn’t stop even with former President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, and is experiencing a rebound with Biden, who offered to regularize 11 million undocumented people and slowed the separation of families.
The traffickers “found a conjuncture in Biden’s speech to start pulling more people,” says Oscar Hernandez, a researcher at the Northern Border College in Mexico.
But the president has just delayed his plan to increase the quota of admitted refugees and keep Trump’s historically low limit of 15,000 (3,000 for Latin America) for now, unleashing criticism from Democrats.
Undocumented arrests in the United States soared 71% in March, to 172,300, while the number of unaccompanied minors doubled to nearly 19,000.
These people arrived after long and dangerous crossings on foot, in truck boxes or by train.
After denouncing that criminals “are suggesting migrants to bring children,” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced Sunday that he will propose to Biden a plan to gradually regularize these people.
Traffic was originally controlled by Mexicans linked to a program that allowed them to work in the United States between 1942 and 1964.
Over the years they were replaced by criminal companies capable of corrupting authorities and employing from “hookers,” those who help cross the border between Mexico and Guatemala, to those who carry a ladder to cross the fence into the United States.
In 2020, Mexico was researching about twenty networks. Migrants also include Cubans, Haitians, Africans, Chinese and Indians, according to the UN.
And although security was tightened, smugglers would be using routes different from the traditional ones.
– Marked as goods –
On the tortuous journey, migrants “become goods,” says the UN, to the point of being marked with bracelets bearing their names and inscriptions such as “deliveries” or “arrivals.”
A 24-year-old Honduran man and his daughter were placed in purple bracelets, which they had to throw away before being handed over to American officers.
“They put them on you before you get to the river, and after you pass, you have to get them out,” says the woman, who was expelled on April 12 with 156 other mothers and their children, from a hostel in Ciudad Juárez. It doesn’t mean his name.
Narcotics broke into migrant trafficking in 2009, amid the military anti-drug offensive deployed by Mexican President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), which has left about 300,000 dead since then.
“It’s a business and, as such, it works by supply and demand (…) If the state puts pressure on the war on drugs, narcos will seek diversification,” explains Javier Urbà, of the Universidad Iberoamericana.
In addition, this crime involves less risk. In 2020, five men were sentenced to six years in prison in Mexico for transporting 785 migrants in trucks.
Some drug traffickers also engaged in robbing, extorting or forcing migrants to work for them. “That’s why we know of extreme murder cases,” Urban adds.
In 2010, 72 migrants were massacred in San Fernando (Tamaulipas, east) for allegedly refusing to serve the Zetas, while 16 Guatemalans-three Mexicans were killed last January.