You’d be surprised.
This story’s about a week old, but I like it because it sums up nicely just how entrepreneurial migrant smuggling has become on the U.S.-Mexico border.
An anonymous tipster notified Sonoran state police about Rita Lugo who was holding four migrant kids in a Nogales, Mexico, stash house. Happens all the time down here, smugglers hold the migrants until it’s time to slip them into the U.S. Police discovered 25 laser visas she was selling for $1,000 apiece to the children of illegal migrants.
Lugo was crossing the kids herself, she told police. Of course, if she were working for somebody else, she probably wouldn’t rat the person out. There are fates worse than death, after all. There are pliers.
The story is an intriguing one because, recently, there’s been a lot of talk by the Americans about major cartels running illegal migrants north because the business is so lucrative. The Sinaloans and the Gulf Cartel, Justice Department officials say, have taken over migrant smuggling because the money’s there. My first instinct is to call them on it as a piece of propaganda created to stir more fear and resentment in the populace. After all, border enforcement is as much about politics as it is about reality.
But my sometimes rabid cynicism can cloud clear judgment, and besides, I have a column to write. So I’ll explore this a little.
Now, drug cartels have always held an uneasy peace with migrant smugglers. For years, the cartels’ bosses have used illegal migrants as decoys to get their loads through the desert. By flooding the zone with illegal crossers hoofing it along, the U.S. Border Patrol is diverted elsewhere; a simple enough tactic that the agency doesn’t seem to mind since it drives up apprehension rates at a time when Americans care more about illegal immigration than drug trafficking.
But what the Feds say now is that Mexico’s biggest cartels are moving people as well as dope, the two became equally lucrative.
The claim bears some exploring. I’ll start with the math:
One Mexican migrant: $1,000 to $2,500 a piece (I’ll leave the exotics, Guatemalans, Chinese, Israeli, Somalis, out of this since their costs unnaturally inflate the numbers).
One pound of marijuana before the border crossing markup: $50 ($750 a pound once it hits Tucson. According to one Justice Department report I read, $5,000 a pound in the interior of the country).
Now, with some exception, here in Arizona, the weed’s getting moved in quarter-ton loads and higher. Full-sized pickup trucks with camouflage netting and blackout lights shotgunning the border and headed to Tucson. Or, wrap the bricks of pot in clear plastic and smear them with axle grease to hide it from the dogs, then bury it deep in a load of winter produce in the back of a semi-truck.
So, before the mark-up, a one-tenth-ton load of weed is worth what 10 illegal migrants would cost.
And ten people’s a nice number for a smuggler to move. Ten allows quick, subtle travel with little in the way of gear. You can keep track of ten people, keep them from rebelling, keep them in line, and most importantly, keep them moving. Usually, the walk is anywhere from 15 to 35 miles, through the network of stationary border agents sitting in their SUVs on the hills, then into a pickup spot.
Assuming everything goes well, the guide, the pollero, places a beer bottle upright on the side of the road as a landmark, makes a quick call, everybody sticks to the bushes and waits for the ride.
Ten people fit easily into a small car, encebollados, the smugglers call it, piled on each other like onion layers. Wedge a small piece of two-by-four into the rear springs so you don’t drag and catch some agent’s attention, and off you go.
The added bonus comes if you’re caught. With weed, your load gets torched in DEA incinerators and you do jailtime. If you’re caught with migrants and nobody rats you out as the smuggler, the lot of you are voluntarily repatriated to Mexico and you voluntarily try again.
Like a load of marijuana with legs, an old friend likes to say.
So, sure, I suppose the numbers make sense. Maybe the cartels really have gotten into the business of migrant smuggling. But I’m still going to be cynical, you knew this was coming, and say that I don’t want to see Joaquín Guzmán’s name invoked every time law enforcement gets lucky and nabs some nervous dimwit with a stack of visas in her purse.
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