How Mexican cartels make big money smuggling migrants across United States border

Capitalising on a new presidential order, thousands of migrant children are flooding overcrowded US border facilities in a frantic bid to find a better life.

Jesus and his son, right, crossed the border in the Rio Grande Valley, were flown from Brownsville to El Paso, Texas, and expelled to Mexico. Picture: AFP

The children sit and lie under tarps and space blankets, separated by transparent makeshift screens or the bright plastic walls of playpens where they spend their days and nights waiting.

More than 4000 are packed into border facilities built for just 250 and some of them have been held well beyond the three-day legal limit.

Many have travelled months through unimaginable horrors, often at the hands of the coyotes to whom their families have paid their lifesavings to traffic them through South and Central America.

Mexico’s criminal cartels are making more than $15 million a day as a flood of young migrants, testing positive for COVID at 10-times the normal, take advantage of new rules that guarantee minors entry to the US if they can cross the border.

Migrants wait outside Gimnasio Kiki Romero, a gym which has been converted into a makeshift migrant shelter by the city of Juarez, after being expelled from the US to Mexico. Picture: AFP

One of Joe Biden’s first acts as president, telegraphed well ahead of his January inauguration, was to repeal Donald Trump’s “remain in Mexico” order that had expelled refugees to wait for processing south of the border.

Migrants now openly say they are coming because of the change and the bursting camps south of San Diego in Tijuana fly “Biden for President” flags.

“Would you have tried to do this when Donald Trump was president?”, ABC reporter Martha Raddatz asked a Brazilian man who crossed from Mexico with his wife and three children.

“Definitely not,” the man said last month, saying they were fleeing violence in their home country. “We have a chance (now) … The same environment that’s going on today was not there last year.”

Asked: “Did you come here because Joe Biden was elected president?”, he said: “Basically”.

It’s a diaspora driven by desperation, greed and incompetence — and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.

A border agent questions asylum seekers after they crossed the Rio Grande into Texas. Picture: AFP

US Border Patrol agents process a group of people they caught crossing the border from Mexico in Penitas, Texas. Picture: AFP

More than 16,000 children crossed the border in March, a 20-year high, and the Biden administration forecasts the number to reach 26,000 in September.

Border authorities who say they already can’t cope are bracing for even more chaos and the pressure showed last week when the press was given rare access to an overrun facility in Donna, Texas.

“When the kids are apprehended out in the field, the first place they’re going to come is this facility,” says Oscar Escamilla, the acting executive officer for Rio Grande Valley Operational Programs Division for Customs and Border Protection.

“All of the unaccompanied children throughout (the Rio Grande Valley in Texas) come to this facility right here.

“We’re way overcapacity. We’re like 700 per cent overcapacity.”

As the first stop for the children and families who are rounded up as they cross the Rio Grande river that separates much of Texas and Mexico, the facility is supposed to hold the minors for 72 hours before they are released into the custody of the Department of Health and Homeland Services (HHS).

Escamilla says he used the play pens to hold the younger children apart from the teenagers in the centre.

“It’s so crowded in those pods that I can’t possibly put these young kids in those pods because they’re going to get hurt,” he says.

The sheer volume of arrivals means some are being held for weeks before being moved on to the HHS, which is tasked with placing them with foster carers if they are not able to reunite with family members in the US.

“I’m a Border Patrol agent. I didn’t sign up for this,” Escamilla says.

“What bogs us down is the fact that we’re having to take care of 1200 kids. We’re already done.

“We already completed the Border Patrol process, so if HHS would be able to take these kids off of our hands then it would be better for everybody.

“We’re not in the business of detention. We’re forced into the business because we can’t turn them over to anybody.”

Migrants begin walking in a caravan in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Picture: AFP

Immigrants who arrived illegally across the Rio Grande river from Mexico at a processing checkpoint before being detained by border patrol agents in the border city of Roma. Picture: AFP

Those who are profiting most from the booming business are the criminal gangs who control vast swathes of the border and charge not only huge fees for crossings but also often control their quarries for years afterwards to make them “pay down” their debts.

“Trafficking is a multibillion-dollar industry,” says retired Tucson Border Patrol chief Roy Villareal.

“A lot of these vulnerable populations use their life savings. Some are essentially indentured servants and they’re working off this debt for a long period of time.

“In other cases, some of these migrants are asked to transport narcotics or some form of crime to work off a different part of their debt.”

This was the experience of Juan, whose journey through Central America to the US 20 years ago with his young son put him into debt that took several years to pay and included a stint selling marijuana in Texas before he moved to another US state.

He now works as a line cook and caterer in New York, one of an estimated 11.4 million undocumented migrants in the US, and his son is in university.

“I came because I wanted a better life for my family,” he says. “It was a long way to come and we faced many hardships.

“I regret the (selling of) drugs and I wish that I could be here (officially). But I don’t regret that we came. This country has given us a life we could not have had.”

The journey to the US carries many risks, from that of drowning at the final crossing to the trek through criminal controlled regions to get there.

Escamilla says even young children have been sexually assaulted and many of those arriving are orphans who have lost their families to gang violence.

“Those things hit hard,” he says.

“These kids cross by themselves. Obviously, the parent pays a fee to the smugger, the cartel member or the smuggler at this point (says) we’ll bring the kid over, we’ll bring them to the river, we’ll hand them over to the to the raft, will place them in a raft and say, ‘OK, go’.

“When you get to the other side, they’ll explain to them ‘there’s going to be an officer’. They’ll explain what we wear and tell them, ‘turn yourselves in’.”

Jesus, 25, and his son Anthony, 5, from Honduras wait outside Gimnasio Kiki Romero, which has been converted into a makeshift migrant shelter, in Ciudad Juarez. Picture: AFP

In his first press conference since taking office, Biden was asked repeatedly about conditions at the border and defended the “surge” as seasonal, saying facilities were overrun because of cutbacks by his predecessor.

Republicans hit back with a congressional tour of the border to expose the ease with which hundreds were crossing and Trump has threatened to visit Texas soon.

And Americans don’t seem to be buying Biden’s argument, with more than half disapproving of his handling of the border, according to a recent NPR poll.

The survey shows 53 per cent disapproved compared to 34 per cent who approved of his immigration measures.

A separate poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research this week found more than half of American respondents wanted the treatment of unaccompanied children in border facilities prioritised and migrant family reunions fast-tracked.

And Escamilla points out that it’s an issue that is not going away any time soon.

“There’s a pull factor,” he says. “They know that we’re releasing them. They know that right now there’s nothing stopping them.”