Human Smuggling Industry Booms on Border - $6.6 Billion a year earnings

[flamingdem]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/07/21/human-smuggling-industry-booms-on-border.html

A network of human smugglers, known as “coyotes,” that lead migrants from Latin American countries across the U.S. border are reportedly building a profitable illegal industry. The vast majority of undocumented immigrants enter the U.S. with the help of coyotes, and the recent surge in unaccompanied minors crossing the border indicates the coyote business is booming. A United Nations report estimates that the coyote industry makes $6.6 billion a year. Impoverished families from Guatemala and Honduras will often pay anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 to a coyote to be guided across the border. A cartel may charge an extra $5,000 on threat of death. One coyote told the Associated Press, “You have to be careful with the Zetas. They cut you in pieces and videotape it.”

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Many of the children and teenagers who travelled to the United States recently said they did so after hearing they would be allowed to stay. The U.S. generally releases unaccompanied children to parents, relatives or family friends while their cases take years to wend through overwhelmed immigration courts. That reality gave rise to rumors of a new law or amnesty for children.

Some say coyotes helped spread those rumors to drum up new business following a huge drop in Mexicans migrating to the United States. Arrests of migrants on the southwestern U.S. border dropped from about 1.1 million annually a decade ago to 415,000 last year.

Immigrants' rights advocates in the U.S. say they are seeing more children from Central America who are not only fleeing gang recruitment and random violence, but who have been targeted themselves.