Mexican cartels and smugglers have increased their already lucrative profits thanks to US-imposed border policies since the pandemic began.

Experts agree that criminal organizations have found a profitable business since the administration of former President Donald Trump created the regulation known as Title 42, which allows border officials to quickly expel migrants from the United States who are caught upon arrival. .

Another measure that aggravates the security of migrants and improves the profitability of the cartels are the Protocols for the Protection of Migrants (PPM), also known as the “Stay in Mexico” program, which have been part of US immigration policy since January 2019. Although President Joe Biden temporarily suspended its application upon taking office, he restarted the program in 2021.

“Since the implementation of ‘Stay in Mexico,’ asylum seekers returned to Mexico are at risk of being kidnapped, extorted, and raped; they are denied access to essential services such as health care and education; and their right to request asylum in the United States is systematically violated,” said the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch.

Current immigration policies have left thousands of migrants stranded in Mexico who do not have the protection of the Mexican or US authorities and who are easy prey for the cartels that are now actively engaged in human trafficking and have made it their new multi-billion dollar company, said a lengthy report on the subject published in AZCentral.

Experts say that human traffickers, known for decades as “coyotes,” charge thousands of dollars to each migrant with the promise of taking them safely from Mexico to the United States. But they almost never keep their promises.

Many times, migrants end up being extorted and tortured to serve as drug mules, after paying their life savings to use clandestine routes to the United States.

The current situation makes the bleak picture even worse as migrants who are deported to Mexico make several attempts to enter through different routes, increasing the profits of the coyotes. If the migrants are expelled they return to the clutches of the cartels and coyotes in a matter of hours.

“We have a border policy that is driving families and refugees right into the hands of organized crime,” Chelsea Sachau, an attorney with the Florence Project Border Action Team, a nonprofit rights organization, told AZCentral. of immigrants and refugees in the state of Arizona.

Mexican cartels are criminal organizations that dominate hundreds of smaller factions and exert control over large stretches of the sparsely populated US-Mexico border. They profit from the smuggling of merchandise, drugs and human trafficking.

Since January 2021, Human Rights First has documented at least 10,318 reports of “kidnapping, murder, torture, rape, and other violent attacks” against migrants expelled to Mexico following Title 42 enforcement.

A lucrative business

Migrants leave from all parts of the planet, although the vast majority come from Latin America, and to a lesser extent Africa and Asia. In the last stages of their long journey, they fly to Mexico City or Cancun and then to different cities in the border states of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas.

Those who are transported to Mexicali, in Baja California, continue their journey by bus or taxi to somewhere near the border. There they must get off and continue alone on foot, where they have a high probability of being caught by border patrols.

The prices charged by the cartels range from $5,000 to $15,000 per person.

“It’s a big, lucrative business for cartels and smuggling organizations because no one crosses the border without paying someone a fee,” said Chris Clem, head of the US Border Patrol’s Yuma sector.

The dynamics of human trafficking have changed in the last 20 years. The experts explained that until the beginning of the 21st century, people smuggling was carried out by independent coyotes who do not work for the cartels.

But now the cartels are the ones who decide which coyotes can operate in their areas of influence, and they are the ones who control and charge fees to let the independent coyotes work.

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