Ruthless human smugglers cash in on wave of illegal aliens

BOSTONHERALD — Sophisticated, international “coyotes” — often working in concert with drug cartels as they smuggle illegal immigrants into the U.S. — are the main traffickers behind the wave of 57,000 unaccompanied Central American children flooding the southern border, according to a Mexican-based human rights expert. And the coyotes are raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars sneaking the kids past the Texas and Arizona borders, according to Victor Clark-Alfaro, a San Diego State University professor and director of the Binational Center for Human Rights in Tijuana, Mexico.
“The international coyotes have contact with Mexican authorities to bribe them, they have safety houses, they pay tariffs to the drug cartels or work for the drug cartels,” Clark-Alfaro told the Herald yesterday. Clark-Alfaro said international coyotes charge as much as $5,000 to bring someone from Honduras. “Of course, they’re not bringing just one. There’s 20 or 30 of them,” he said. “There’s a lot of money involved in bringing all those children to the border. They bring them to the border to the U.S. side and tell them to look for border patrol.” [Read More]