Consider This from NPR - How Brazen Smugglers Are Fueling Record Numbers At The Southern Border

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

A record 172,000 migrants were apprehended at the southern border in March. Those numbers are fueled, in part, by smuggling organizations that exploit desperate migrants, most of them from central America. NPR's John Burnett and KTEP's Angela Kocherga report on their tactics.Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas tells NPR about a new multi-agency effort to crack down on smugglers. In participating regions, you'll also hear from local journalists about what's happening in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. Last November, two major hurricanes hit Honduras, one right after the other. The ensuing flood in that country's Sula Valley was so devastating, locals call it La Hiena, literally, the fill. Some were rescued, but some stood on tops of their houses for two to three days without food or water in the hot sun.

We thought it was a flood, like something out of the Bible. Blanca Marisa Balegas, a 41-year-old tortilla seller, lives in Suda Planeta, an impoverished area with a lot of gangs, where they're still digging out of dried mud. It was terrible. Dead chickens, dogs, pigs, cows floating in the water. That kind of devastation has cut the country's GDP in half. In the coming months, millions are expected to face acute food insecurity. And it's one more reason why so many people are just leaving. We know people who have lost their jobs because, you know, the restaurant they worked was underwater.

Kurt Allen Verbee co-founded a non-profit, the Association for a More Just Society, which has been working in Honduras for decades. I know people who lost jobs because the owner of the restaurant died of COVID. All of those things come by and your kids aren't in school. You don't have money to pay internet to have your kids in school. You know, the gangs are threatening your kids. Families have been pushed to the breaking point. In the border town of Corinto, NPR spoke to 32-year-old Luis Alberto Enrique, a farmer who says he's given up.

Between the storms, the gangs, and his meager crops, he's leaving with his family and two small daughters. They're trying to get to Houston, where he has relatives. I heard on the news that there is chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border, but I understand that they're not deporting families. Hopefully we'll get there eventually, even if it takes us one, two, three months. We put ourselves in the hands of U.S. laws and of God. Consider this.

For many migrants, the long journey to the U.S. is an act of desperation. Smugglers know that, and their business is booming. From NPR, I'm Adi Kornish. It's Monday, May 3rd. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. A few years ago, a website popped up in Stockton, California, and conspiracy theories started ramping way up.

And it's being funded by conservative movement underneath the table. And I was like, oh my gosh, you guys, people really believe this. What happens when the local news outlet isn't fact-checking conspiracy theories, maybe encouraging them? Listen now from NPR's Invisibilia podcast. It's Consider This from NPR. Smugglers are not a new problem. People have been relying on their help to flee Central American countries for decades. But lately, smuggling organizations have been more successful. And we know all too well that these organizations put profit over human life with devastating consequences. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced a new multi-agency effort

to target smugglers. It's called Operation Sentinel. The government, Mayorkas said, plans to target smugglers by freezing their financial assets, revoking travel documents, and working more closely with nations south of the border. They routinely prey on migrants, taking vast sums of money from them in exchange for often empty promises to get them safely to the United States. Empty or not, more and more migrants are willing to accept those promises. At the border, crossings are at a near 20-year high, with more than 150,000 people apprehended in each of the last two months.

And the numbers have made it even more difficult to keep up with smugglers. NPR's John Burnett has this report from the Texas border. When immigration policy changes in Washington, it's felt immediately here on the Jones Ranch, about an hour's drive from the Rio Grande. Whit Jones, in a mud-spattered hat and spurs, drives his pickup along the highway, pointing out all the repairs where smuggling vehicles plowed through his fences. A lot of times they come and hit these gates. This gate's been fixed three, four, five times. You can see it's been knocked down a bunch. In its 130 years of existence, the Jones Ranch has weathered hurricanes and droughts, fever ticks and screw worms, and lots of migrant traffic.

But he says it's never been this bad. Jones estimates they've spent more than $30,000 just since January fixing dozens of breaks in their fences. What's happening is more people are piling into smuggling vehicles, and if the sheriff gives chase... What the car will do is just run through the fence. They drive as far as they can on the property and tearing down fences as they drive. The car stops and everybody bails out of the car, so that's why they call it a bailout. The Jones Ranch and many other landowners down here noticed a change as soon as the Biden

administration came in and loosened immigration policies. Unaccompanied minors and families traveling with children who were ejected under the previous administration started crossing the border in huge numbers to surrender to the Border Patrol and ask for asylum, but they're not the ones vexing ranchers. Those are the migrants looking for work who are being told by coyotes now's the time to dash north while agents are busy processing asylum seekers. Mark Morgan, the former Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, recently estimated as many as half of border agents have been pulled off their patrol duties to tend to kids and families in custody. He said CBP unofficially estimates 1,000 people a day are sneaking across the border and getting away.

Whit Jones unlocks a gate and drives into a sandy pasture to park under the welcoming shade of a mesquite tree. An old windmill clatters nearby, filling a concrete cattle tank with water that has saved many a migrant trekking across this parched landscape, if they're lucky enough to find it. Jones is angry that migrants who just want to work are dying. The fences and all that, that's a problem for sure. But, you know, the bodies we're finding out here, that's what needs to be discussed. And, you know, that should we're finding out here, that's what needs to be discussed. And, you know, that should be focused on more. Unauthorized migrants trying to avoid capture are tromping through unfamiliar terrain. Some die of dehydration. In neighboring Brooks County, Sheriff Benny Martinez has already recovered 22 human remains since January. In all of 2020,

there were 34 dead in his county. And I'm talking about bodies that died in the brush already. We picked up, I think, three bodies in the last maybe five days or so. And we still need the hottest month coming up. This is April. We still got June, July, August. Sheriff Martinez, whose county has a reputation as a deadly corridor for migrants heading to Houston, says it's going to be a rough year. Every day, his 9-11 dispatcher is getting these kinds of calls from alert motorists. Hi, I wanted to report an illegal twilight people. They picked up or dropped off? I just passed the checkpoint, and there's a white board edge.

Martinez says what's changed in 2021 is the recklessness of the coyotes. In one brazen incident, a smuggling truck drove 15 miles straight across the backcountry, busting through barbed wire fences and spooking cattle the whole way. The maneuver was so crazy, even his deputies wouldn't pursue. The vehicle got away. One of the differences is that they're more aggressive in terms of how they're coming through, okay, and knocking fences down, and just being careless, because actually they have people in the vehicle, and they don't care. They're just driving through, and they're driving hard. It's gotten so bad, earlier this month in

the town of Cotulla, north of Laredo, school officials warned parents to be watchful of their children playing outside and walking home from school because local authorities were doing eight to ten high-speed car chases a day, often ending in bailouts. Eddie Canales is also worried. He's director of the South Texas Human Rights Center, which sets out drinking water in barrels beside the highway for thirsty migrants. Canales and rancher Whit Jones would agree there has to be a better immigration policy than one that enriches the smuggling cartels and endangers migrants. You let people come through. Give them safe passage. I mean, everybody's an essential worker anyway, and people are going to work. Asked to comment on the growing frustration among South Texas residents,

a CBP spokesman said 300 agents have been detailed to the Rio Grande Valley from elsewhere in the country to help out with the surge of immigrant traffic. NPR's John Burnett. You heard John report there that smugglers know more border agents are busy with asylum claims and are telling migrants to take advantage of that. Mr. Barnett is entirely accurate when he speaks of the challenges at the border. I spoke to Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas on Monday. Those challenges are not new. It is difficult. It has always been difficult. And that's what we do. We do the difficult work. The long journey from Central America to the U.S. border isn't just dangerous, it's incredibly expensive. But smugglers don't necessarily require full payment up front,

which makes migrants even more desperate to make it to America and pay off their debts. Angela Cocherga with member station KTEP in El Paso, Texas, has more. Ana Castro sat on a curb just steps from an international bridge in downtown Juarez, Mexico, and considered her options. She left Guatemala earlier this month with her 12-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son. She says Border Patrol agents turned them away after they finally reached the U.S. They'd walked two hours through thorny brush in the desert to get to the outskirts of El Paso. Even so, she's leaning towards trying to cross again. That's because she still owes thousands of dollars to the smuggler who brought her this far, and she needs to find work in the U.S. to pay that debt. Smuggling organizations make huge profits moving migrants, these days mostly from Central America, through Mexico and

across the border. To get to the U.S., migrants often have to go through these transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs. TCOs control all corridors, all routes. During an interview at El Paso Border Patrol headquarters, two agents talk about their efforts to track smuggling operations. They spoke on the condition that we not use their names to protect their safety. They have their own checkpoints, you know. They have their scouts. It's a controlled area. Smugglers, or coyotes, have long been a force on the southwest border.

In recent months, though, the agents say they've been particularly brazen. Surveillance footage shows smugglers dropping young children over a 14-foot border wall and leaving others on their own. Three years old, five years old, unattended out there in the desolate area. We had an eight-year-old abandoned out in the desert. The border is still closed to most migrants under a pandemic health order, but the Biden administration has been allowing unaccompanied children into the country. Jeremy Slack, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who researches migration issues, says smugglers use those policies to their advantage. They encourage parents to send their kids across the border alone while offering to help sneak

adults into the U.S. If you really wanted to go after smuggling and you create a system at the border where people can sign up and fill out their forms, show up and get processed in an orderly way, that will take the wind out of sails. For now, the dangers of illegally crossing the border without a smuggler are common knowledge, says this man from Cuba. He's been waiting in Juarez for more than a year for the chance to ask for asylum in the U.S. He says if those who control the border find you trying to cross, they'll ask for a password. If you don't have one, things go badly. Smuggling organizations are also charging more these days because it's harder to cross the border. Johanna Suarez paid $7,000 to get from Honduras

to the Texas border. She says she has to make it to the U.S. so she can work to pay the half she still owes them. So far, she's crossed the border five times and plans to try again. After coming this far, she's decided there's no turning back. Angela Kocherga with NPR member station KTEP, reporting from Juarez, Mexico. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.