Border securityHeightened border security helps fuel billion dollar smuggling business

As the United States makes it more difficult to cross its borders illegally, business for human traffickers has been booming with smugglers making billions of dollars a year.

According to the United Nations, traffickers make an estimated $6.6 billion each year by bringing immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border.

In May, x-ray machines at checkpoints in southern Mexico detected the faint outline of people packed tightly into a trailer leading to the largest bust yet. When officials inspected the vehicles, they found 513 people crammed into two trailers in the Mexican state of Chiapas, near Guatemala.

Individuals pay anywhere from $7,000 to $30,000 to enter the United States, putting the value of the cargo from May’s bust at a minimum of $3.5 million.

Antonio Mazzitelli of the regional U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said, “As far as I know, this is the first time we’ve seen such big numbers, but it does confirm what we already knew. There are more and more people coming from all other regions of the world using the Central American and Mexican corridor to reach the North American market.”

While the majority of migrants found in the trailers were Mexican, there were also Indians, Nepalese, and Chinese.

The United States has inadvertently generated a boom in the smuggling business by making the border harder to cross. As a result, it is believed that drug cartels have entered the lucrative market.

Officials struggling to clamp down on human traffickers are uncertain if the smuggling rings are operating in conjunction with Mexico’s drug cartels, but some authorities believe the cartels and smugglers are working together along with corrupt local police and federal officials.

“It’s clear that they’re immigration agents, federal police, Zetas, maras, the whole gamut, along with local crime groups,” said the Reverend Alejandro Solalinde, a priest who runs a migrant shelter in Oaxaca. “Those who make money off migrants are all part of the same mafia.”

With the journey becoming more dangerous, migrants have been forced to pay more. Guatemalan officials say that migrants are paying as much as $10,000 for the chance to enter the United States, double the price of two years ago.

“They put more restrictions on the border and the cost goes up,” explained Reverend Muro Verzeletti, a priest and the head of Guatemala’s Ministry for Human Mobility. “This business is being facilitated by the same governments that do not have comprehensive immigration policies and that throw migrants into a business (that is) in the hands of organized crime.”

In addition, smugglers force migrants to pay up front so even if their cargo is intercepted, they still make money.

A 2010 United Nations report on transnational crime found that by 2006, 95 percent of Mexicans entering the United States paid smugglers.

Mexican authorities first installed x-ray machines at checkpoints to help stop the smugglers, and so far the machines have led to the largest busts yet. Officials also have two mobile scanners that can be deployed anywhere.

Despite the dangers, the costs of entering the United States, and the stepped up security measures, there seems to be little to stem the desire for people seeking to enter the country.

“We’re seeing a rise in recent months. The apprehensions are happening almost daily, though this is the second large one,” said Juan Jose Gonzalez, who leads Southern Border Movement, a nonprofit organization. “And each time the smugglers charge more to move people north.”