Cartels reap growing profits in the smuggling of migrants across the US-Mexico border

Jesús fled his crisis-plagued birth country of Venezuela for Mexico in 2019, hoping to one day cross the border into America and a more promising future. For two years, he jealously watched other migrants make the crossing.

"I was seeing all the migrants crossing in front of my nose,” said the 21-year-old, who didn’t want to give his last name for fear of legal consequences. “I thought: Why wouldn't I, if I'm so close."

Jesús spent months trying to find a smuggler to help him make the dangerous journey. But he found it extremely difficult to trust anyone. More often than ever, those smugglers — including the one he eventually found — are tied to Mexican drug cartels. 

Cartels play an increasing role in the surge of migrants fueling the most recent immigration crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Experts say they make big profits helping smuggle people across, and those profits comprise a significant and growing portion of their vast riches.

And some of the money passing hands from migrants to smugglers comes through U.S. banks and financial services such as Western Union.

Jaeson Jones, a retired Texas public safety captain, said there’s no way to know exactly how much cartels earn in the smuggling business.

“But I can without any doubt tell you that the profits they are making today are like nothing we have seen prior," he said. "This is a major revenue stream.”

Jones said cartels treat desperate migrants like a commodity.

The majority of the 900,000 migrants who tried to cross into the United States so far this fiscal year are from Central America or Mexico, but a growing number are traveling from South American countries such as Venezuela.

Most pay thousands to get to the United States, and the cartels reap the benefits while also bolstering their power in the region.

"Criminal organizations control the border,” so they control who and what crosses the border, said Gary Hale, drug policy fellow at the U.S. Mexico Center at Rice University’s Baker Institute in Houston. “And that becomes a lucrative moneymaker, a revenue generator for these cartels.”

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Growing use of ‘coyotes’

Migrants bound for America are seeking refuge, a better life, and to escape threats, poverty and violence. Since President Joe Biden took office, the number crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally has increased exponentially.

In the past, people often braved border crossings without smugglers, who are also known as “coyotes” or “polleros.”

Research by the U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics found that smuggler usage rates climbed from less than 50% during the 1970s to 95% for first-time border crossers surveyed in 2006. And the proportion has gotten higher since.

As more migrants used smugglers, cartels became more interested in the business, especially since they were already smuggling drugs across the border. 

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Until recently, however, they handled the migrant-smuggling business from afar, separated from the day-to-day operations of the smugglers themselves, Jones said.

“What we see now is a much more harmonized cycle occurring," he said. "You see that in the way that they're processing migrants before they cross into the United States — putting wristbands on them, for example. They're logging everything about them, that's how they're able to keep them into debt bondage,” or the pledge of services as security for the repayment of debt in which the terms of repayment are unclear and the debt holder keeps control.

Smugglers usually work for an organization or pay a fee to each gang in the territory they use. Some coyotes don't receive direct money from migrants; in many cases, they're just workers doing their job.

Instead, experts say, the wire transfer or cash paid by those crossing the border — which can range from $1,300 to $10,000, depending on the migrants’ nationality — goes mostly to the person in charge of the trafficking business, often a cartel member. Portions of those fees also go to corrupt Mexican authorities and government checkpoints or "retenes," located throughout the south of Mexico.

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Often, Jones said, the money changing hands comes via U.S. financial institutions.

"We've seen everything from cash to the use of Western Union to wire money,” he said. “We've also seen the (use) of U.S. banking institutions, creating a bank account in the U.S. where funds are in the bank, and then somebody is pulling those funds out after they're given all the banking information and (a) method to do so."

Jones said it’s difficult for U.S. authorities to investigate such transactions. “It takes time, it takes resources, it takes effort, and by the time you have done (that), they've closed that bank account and moved on to 15 others,” he said.

In a statement, officials with the American Bankers Association said banks try to detect and report financial red flags to law enforcement, filing more than 2.7 million "suspicious activity reports" and 16 million "currency transaction reports" annually with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the U.S. treasury department.

"Banks are absolutely committed to combatting human trafficking and human smuggling and work in close coordination with law enforcement to try and identify those committing these heinous crimes," the statement said. "These crimes can be very hard to detect, which is why banks also provide extensive training to their employees on how to spot and report unusual transactions or face-to-face customer interactions that may indicate human smuggling or other illicit activities.”

Scott Apodaca, head of financial intelligence at Western Union, said his company also tries to combat human smuggling, using "very powerful and innovative technology" to help detect it. He said the company also has a financial intelligence unit that includes more than 550 people who hone in on emerging threats and work to prevent related transactions.

Violence, danger and death

By getting into the smuggling business, the cartels have created a vicious cycle. Their main business — the drug trade — spurs unending violence in the border area. That violence causes more and more migrants to resort to using smugglers because they believe it will keep them safer. All the while, the cartels’ fortunes and power grow.

But often, smugglers don’t make migrants safer. Quite the opposite.

In early February, a 911 call prompted an extensive search in the San Antonio, Texas, area after a man saying he and other 80 migrants were trapped in a tanker truck, struggling to breathe. After a long search, the tanker was never found.

Migrants have been killed or kidnapped for not paying a fee to cross a territory controlled by an organized crime group. In February, The Courier Journal traveled to Guatemala to meet the family of a young man killed with 18 other migrants whose charred bodies were found inside two vans in the town of Santa Anita in Camargo, the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, barely 50 miles from the U.S. border.

The investigation is still ongoing.

Venezuelan migrant Jesús, and his sister, were willing to face the dangers for a chance to live in the United States. Millions of people from Venezuela take such chances. According to the United Nations' refugee agency, at least 5.6 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2005 to escape violence, insecurity, and threats, as well as a longstanding economic crisis that has led to a lack of food, medicines and essential services.

“We decided it was time to leave,” Jesús told The Courier Journal.

He hoped to get to Miami, Florida, where many relatives lived. Victor Hernández, his cousin, paid $3,500 to the coyote to cross him and his sister through Ciudad Acuña, a border city with Del Rio, Texas. The coyote was another Venezuelan.

When Hernandez asked for the information to make the payment, he said the coyote sent him many options for remittance companies, which transfer money from one account to another, to wire money to Mexico; as well as U.S. bank accounts. Hernandez was wary of U.S. companies because he was living in Miami with an asylum case open and knew he was paying for an illegal service.

"It was easier for me to pay with the U.S. method, but for my own protection, I made an international wire transfer to Mexico,” he said. “But I know people that have sent the money to those bank accounts." 

Messages broadcasted to the public in WhatsApp chat groups show the costs to cross from Venezuela to the United States. One said: "At this moment it's difficult to get into Mexico, that's why we have the safe pass to enter Mexico, $1,300, after entering Mexico you'll have to pay another $1,300 to cross through the river or $1,600 through the wall. Payment methods: wire transfers and cash only." 

After leaving at 2 a.m. for the trip from Monterrey to Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, Jesús and his sister were driven to a remote location on a Friday afternoon until the coyote showed up and asked them to follow him. 

They followed a rough road and ran many times until they found the borderline. Before crossing the Rio Grande river, they were asked by coyotes to throw their cellphones into the water.

Jesús and his sister crossed the river and were detained minutes later by the border patrol officers in U.S. territory. 

Hernández waited seven days to hear from Jesús, who called from a detention center in San Antonio, Texas.

“I felt relieved,” Hernández said.

After 25 "traumatic" days detained, Jesús and his sister were released from the detention center, where he said he was well treated but suffered “psychological damage” because he felt such uncertainty about the future.

He’s now living in Miami. His first hearing with ICE is scheduled for October 13, and he hopes to be able to stay. 

"Now that I know how's life here, I'd do it again,” he said. “However, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It’s a tough path."

Karol Suárez is a Venezuela-born journalist based out of Mexico City.