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.
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