Mexico CityFor the human smugglers who ferry migrants northwards from Central America, the return of Donald Trump is a welcome New Year gift that promises to supercharge their business. “Bless Donald Trump for winning,” said one people smuggler, who talked to the Thomson Reuters Foundation on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from Mexico’s authorities as well as its drug cartels.
“We’re eagerly waiting January 20th to be back in business and start earning some more dollars,” said the 45-year-old, who has spent the past six years transporting undocumented migrants — most from Central America and the Caribbean — to the US. Now he is banking on a pickup in trade due to Trump’s campaign promise to crack down on migrants once he takes office on Jan 20, vowing to lengthen the border wall to keep migrants out and enforce mass deportations on those who have made it.
Like thousands of other smugglers, he is hoping to cash in big time from Trump’s return — expecting an increase of at least $2,000 in profits per person.
Smugglers, or coyotes as they are called locally, are also tapping into a rising sense of panic among migrants, many of whom are fleeing deepening violence and poverty, fearing it will become harder to gain asylum under a second Trump presidency.
Even before Trump won re-election, smugglers were peddling disinformation and scams on social media, telling migrants to make it to the southern US border before Trump takes office as his presidency will make it harder to cross. In recent years, the father of three said he had ferried about 30 people a week to the US, be it young men or families with children, charging at least $5,000 a head for passage to a new life by plane, bus or car.
His business comes from word-of-mouth recommendations from families who have successfully made it to the US, and the smuggler said he also connects migrants with a series of safe houses where they can eat, sleep and use the Internet.
This past year, he said, business was down a whopping 80% after the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency set up an app that let migrants make their asylum claim at the border.
Instead of hiring a smuggler to get them across, migrants instead waited at the border in Mexico for an appointment — even if it meant living several months in areas rife with crime.
In 2023, there were 1,450 appointments available a day on the CBP One app. But as Trump has vowed to get rid of the app — effectively closing the main legal option for people seeking asylum — this will likely raise demand for smuggler services, which will in turn boost the fees that coyotes can charge.
“They say they will close the border, but we always find a hole to sneak people through. They can’t close the entire border, it’s impossible,” said the smuggler.
The coyote said he had a near-100% success rate by scaling the wall in areas controlled by cartels. On the US side, he then drives the migrants to their chosen destination.
Trump is expected to declare illegal immigration a national emergency on taking office, pulling resources from across the government to crack down on both legal and illegal immigration.
Yet tightening the restrictions does not dissuade people from migrating, said Maureen Meyer with the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a human rights advocacy group.
“Increased enforcement does very little to decrease migration flows to the US. What it does is feed profits into organised criminal groups,” said Meyer, WOLA’s vice president for programs.
According to 2017 estimates by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), human trafficking to the US earns criminal groups up to $4.2bn a year.
As US and Mexican authorities tighten security along their border, a violent turf war is playing out further south over the Mexico-Guatemala border — changing the smuggling business, who controls it and heaping new dangers on migrants.
If smugglers once largely worked independently, operating within their own communities, many have now been recruited by the cartels, who control every step of the way to the border.
Cartels run a vast transport network to facilitate their mass people smuggling: tourist buses, sweltering tractor-trailer trucks, motorcycles, taxis and app-based drivers who transport migrants through Mexico and into the US.
“We’re always paying an extortion fee to do anything — move people, merchandise, food,” said the smuggler, who has been recruited by a cartel that he preferred not to identify.
Smugglers also pay corrupt officials so they can get through checkpoints expressly set up to catch migrants, the coyote said.
Cartel violence is especially fierce in Chiapas state in southern Mexico, a key crossing point for migrants heading north from Central America or from as far as the Darien Gap — a perilous stretch of rainforest straddling Colombia and Panama. In Chiapas, factions from the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generacion Cartel are fighting for control of human trafficking, among other illegal businesses, said Armando Vargas, security expert with the think tank Mexico Evalua.
“Because people have different uses, from forced recruitment to sexual exploitation to organ removal,” said Vargas, explaining how organized crime now makes more money from human traffic than it does from gun smuggling.
Every child and adult pays 1,200 pesos ($60) to the cartel just for the right to cross the river that divides Mexico and Guatemala, the smuggler said. Whoever refuses to pay — migrant and smugglers alike — runs a high risk of kidnap or murder, he added. WOLA, and other human rights groups, have documented the acute dangers that migrants face on their journey north.
“They have often been subjected to horrendous abuse during the kidnapping including sexual assault, torture, withholding food and water as a way to send messages to the family members, oftentimes in the US, who are being extorted to pay ransom,” said Meyer.
As cartels engage in more aggressive turf wars, Vargas expects this will also propel more Mexicans to risk all and head for the US in search of a better life.
“The risk of violence will increase for these vulnerable people, not only from Mexico, but from all of Latin America,” said Vargas.
And despite the triple whammy for would-be migrants of greater violence, higher fees and tougher restrictions, the app-based driver-turned-coyote is banking on a highly profitable 2025.
“Migrants don’t want to pay (for a smuggler), but I think we will become their only, and safest, option,” he said. — Thomson Reuters Foundation