While US President Joe Biden was traveling on the night of Sunday, January 8, 2022, from El Paso, Texas, to Mexico City, 10 people were rescued by members of the National Institute of Migration. Due to strong currents of water, they were stranded on rocks of the Rio Grande, when trying to cross the border with the United States.
Despite the tightening of immigration policies and the recent dissuasive measures announced by Biden and his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), thousands of people are still trying every day to reach the US.
“The push factors that force migrants to leave their homes are much stronger than any deterrent attempt. Hunger, the threat of criminal groups or repressive governments continue to exist and are stronger than any barrier“, says Adam Isacson, in charge of border security issues at the WOLA research center on human rights in the Americas.
#10Jan | Hundreds of migrants remain on the streets of downtown El Paso, Texas (USA), because they refuse to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol for fear of being deported to Mexico or another country.
🎥: @AliBradleyTV pic.twitter.com/XFCTutxIbd
– The Journal (@eldiario) January 10, 2023
Millions a year for criminals
According to the 2022 report of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental body against money laundering and other crimes, Two-thirds of the people who crossed irregularly from Mexico to the US in 2019 were “guided or accompanied by migrant smugglers.” The result: a million-dollar business.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that, on two of the main migrant smuggling routes, from Africa to Europe and from South America to North America, about $6.75 billion annually is generated for criminals operating in those regions.
According to a study by the National Population Council of Mexico, migrants can pay between 5,000 and 9,600 dollars for their journey in that country and another 2,200 dollars to cross the border accompanied by a guide.
Mexico and Colombia, two crucial steps
“Human trafficking was an activity carried out by ‘polleros’ but, over time, organized crime groups found that migrants could be a source of incomes”, indicates the security consultant David Saucedo, in an interview with DW from Mexico.
Isacson adds that organized crime groups, in turn, depend on their relationship with corrupt state agents. “In almost every part of the border, the migrant or his ‘pollero’ has to pay organized crime groups a ‘piso’ or transit right, and these groups pay bribes to state agents. Very few migrants manage to make the journey without the participation of organized crime,” concludes the border security expert.
The Sinaloa cartel, the Jalisco cartel and the Zetas are some of those behind the migrant smuggling. According to Saucedo, in the Mexican city of Juárez, there are frequent confrontations between the Mexicles (the armed wing of the Sinaloa cartel) and La Línea, (which works with the Juárez cartel), to capture the management of the migratory caravans.
In Colombia, the picture is not very different. According to Jeremy McDermott, director in Colombia of the security studies center InSight Crime, there are two organizations behind migrant smuggling in the country: the Tren de Aragua, a mega-gang that mainly deals with Venezuelan migrants, and the self-defense groups Gaitanistas or Clan del Golfo. .
Photojournalist Omar Ornelas shared a video showing migrants crossing the new wall that separates the US-Mexico border. It is a new division that has greater height. pic.twitter.com/WuiP8V7KYB
– The Latin Time (@eltiempolatino) January 10, 2023
Victims of criminal organizations
“Migrants are extremely vulnerable to exploitation and recruitment by organized crime. Gender-based violence is widespread, as is extortion and robbery,” McDermott explains to DW. Between April 2021 and May 2022 alone, Doctors Without Borders treated 420 women and men for cases of sexual violence during their passage through Darién.
In Mexico, according to Saucedo, there are differences between the risks according to nationalities. “With the Mexicans, what these groups want is to have an income, so they let them pass because they know that they will go and return two or three times a year.” However, “Central Americans, Cubans or Haitians, who are unlikely to return to Mexico, are more frequently victims of other crimes such as sexual exploitation and kidnapping for economic purposes, or for slave labor,” he says.
Isacson assures that, according to the information collected by WOLA, in the case of transit through Central America, “kidnappings or other violent assaults are not so frequent”, but “bribes by authorities” are.
Record numbers of migration and deaths
According to records from the US Department of Security, the country closed 2022 with historic numbers of irregular migration. Border patrols reported a daily average of 6,300 encounters with undocumented migrants in fiscal year 2022 (through September). UNODC estimates, however, that annual irregular entries into the US reach 3 million: more than 8,200 people every day.
Migrant deaths at the border crossing have also reached their highest, with 830 on the US side alone.. In the statistics of the “Missing Migrants” project of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), deaths and disappearances last year were 521 on the US-Mexico border and 195 on the route from Cuba to the US. USA
The report indicates that violence en route is the second most common cause of death crossing Mexico, accounting for more than 10 percent of the total deaths and disappearances of migrants registered since 2014 in the Americas.
But, in David Saucedo’s opinion, the impact of migrant smuggling and the violence they suffer is difficult to measure if one considers that they do not have the confidence to report because they themselves are committing a crime and risk being deported. And to this is added the corruption of State institutions: “Many members of the National Institute of Migration are with the trafficking networks, so a complaint before them is a death sentence.”
Read more:
There are immigration agreements between Biden, AMLO and Trudeau during a summit in Mexico
Colorado will stop busing immigrants after pleas from New York and Chicago mayors
USCIS already has personnel “trained and ready” to accept applications from Cubans, Nicaraguans and Haitians