By Steven Dudley / InSight Crime
Federal and local authorities of Arizona alarms were raised by the increase in recourse to subjects not related to the criminal groups to act as drivers in the human trafficking operationsa practice which, they point out, has brought serious and tragic consequences for the people involved, the migrants, and also for passers-by.
Several members of the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit, the Investigative Division of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona told InSight Crime that human trafficking groups are recruiting individuals, many of them teenagers, through social media platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook and Instagramso that they can travel in their cars to border areas and pick up undocumented migrants.
Once there, the drivers are instructed where to take the migrants, usually a shelter or other collection point. The driver’s pay varies. HSI researchers say it hovers USD 500 per person. But the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office estimates it to be $ 2,500 per personwhich coincides with a recently decommissioned human smuggling operation in southern Texas, where, according to federal prosecutors, the drivers they were paid up to $ 2,500. The money is paid for in cash on delivery, via bitcoin ATMs or money transfer applications, according to authorities.
READ MORE: There are two Mexicans involved in the trafficking and death of migrants in Texas
However, the outcome of some of these human trafficking actions has been tragic. In July, local Arizona media reported this a Ford Explorer passenger died in Bensona town in Cochise County, named after the car driver, trying to escape from the policecrashed into an intersection with another car after going through the nails that the police station had installed on the road. Two migrants and the driver survived the accident..
In October 2021, local media in Arizona reported that a teenager who he was traveling at almost 160 km / h with two migrants in his vehicle he crashed into a Ford Focus. The 65-year-old woman driving the Ford died instantly. The driver was charged with manslaughter; the two migrants traveling with the teenager were injured but survived.
The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office says so In the past year, six people have died from these high-speed chasesmany of which occurred in residential areas after authorities stopped chasing suspicious “cargo cars,” as these vehicles are called.
“This is a humanitarian crisis,” says Robert Watkins, the station’s commander of operations. “People don’t feel safe.”
This includes migrants, some of whom have been seriously injured in numerous incidents, Watkins points out. And he adds that, since his office started following the modus operandi, they’ve signed up nearly 600 “road accidents” in a six-month periodand 107 arrests were made after high-speed pursuits.
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There are two main conclusions that emerge from these practices on the US-Mexico border.
First, this is another clear example of the power of social networks and how human trafficking criminal groups are exploiting what these networks offer.
“Social media is our enemy,” Cochise County Police Commissioner Mark Dannels told InSight Crime.
READ MORE: Locked in a trailer, 50 migrants die in San Antonio, Texas; 22 are Mexican
And maybe he is right. US citizens have long aided criminal operations along the border, but what the authorities describe is a type of criminal outsourcing that allows human traffickers to expand their workforce potential. Watkins says the suspects come from as far away as California and New Jersey.
In addition, remote recruiting, often in complete anonymity, means that criminal groups are hardly more exposed. Virtual interactions also make drivers feel less exposed, HSI researchers say.
“Probably [los conductores] they know they are gathering people, ”says Leo Lamas, deputy special agent in charge of the HSI in Tucson. “And they think, ‘What’s wrong? I’m just collecting people. I’m [personas] poor, right? ‘ They don’t realize the seriousness of what they are doing until they get caught up in a high-speed chase and they realize they’ve made the mess they got into worse. “
Secondly, this new modus operandi shows how quickly a migrant’s value decreases as soon as he crosses the border. The decision to entrust migrants into the hands of inexperienced people who are not part of the smuggling group indicates that the network no longer cares what happens to their “goods”, as the authorities claim.
“Migrants put all the money and take all the risks,” Watkins explains. “The group [de traficantes] it is never influenced ”.
Watkins says that, in recent months, his team has become desperate and have begun exploring extreme solutions, such as using a sniper with a suppressed .300 assault weapon that could shoot the car’s engine from a helicopter. running.
READ MORE: Behind the tragedy of migrants in Texas, the failed programs of AMLO and Biden
He clarifies that this idea has been discarded and that they prefer to put nails on the road and perhaps, in the near future, trucks with struts attached to the bumpers.
*Parker Asmann contributed to the reporting for this article.
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This article was originally published by InSight Crime. you can read it here.
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