The smuggling of migrants across the US-Mexico border relies heavily on US labor, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review found in an eight-month investigation that paints a portrait of the network of smugglers known as “coyotes.”
Three out of every five convicted smugglers are US citizens, according to an analysis by the newspaper of 3,254 federal trafficking convictions during 2013 and last year in federal courts in the southern stretches of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
The typical coyote is a white US man of Hispanic descent, 34 years old, with little schooling, the Tribune-Review reported on Saturday as it began a weeklong series on human smuggling across the US-Mexico border.
Many are unemployed or do the work to pick up extra money.
Human smuggling is a labor-intensive industry, with about one coyote driving, feeding or guarding every three migrants entering the US illegally, the newspaper found.
Americans dominate key parts of the trade, especially jobs designed to circumnavigate the US Customs and Border Protection dragnet that extends hundreds of kilometers inland from the border.
Four out of every five coyotes convicted of transporting migrants — or serving as chequedores, the scouts who spy on law enforcement so the drivers can avoid them — are Americans who earn a premium for both their birthright and the risks they are willing to take.
The typical American receives US$840 per head unlawfully motoring migrants through Border Patrol checkpoints, where the likelihood of arrest is high, according to court records analyzed by the Tribune-Review.
US drivers ferrying migrants to stash houses or drop-off points far from federal agents earn about US$500 less per person, the newspaper reported, while Mexican and Central American drivers garner only about US$155.
The fees that fund the underworld economy stem from rapidly improving US border security.
In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the US Congress doubled the size of the Border Patrol to about 21,000 agents. The agency’s growing effectiveness now forces 90 percent of those looking to enter the US illegally to hire smugglers in what has become a multibillion-dollar business, according to the UN.
Migrants pay thousands of dollars for the journey, the paper said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS