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As the border becomes more militarized, so do smuggling gangs

The Washington Post has a nice piece today about an underappreciated part of the recent surge in illegal immigration: the transition of smuggling operations from inefficient amateurs to large-scale professionals who operate with military precision. It's big business:

With revenue estimated at $4 billion to $12 billion a year, the smuggling of migrants has joined drugs and extortion as a top income stream for groups like Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels, increasing their economic clout throughout the hemisphere.

Ironically, one of the big drivers of this transformation was America's obsession with hardening the border:

Migrant smuggling has been around for decades, with “coyotes,” or guides, a fixture in many Central American and Mexican villages. Only recently has it ballooned into a transnational, industrial-scale activity, involving sophisticated criminal groups, fleets of tractor-trailers, and hotels and warehouses that can hold hundreds of migrants a night.

U.S. policy, in part, explains the change. In the 1990s, as illegal immigration mounted, Washington began a major buildup on the Mexican border, doubling the number of Border Patrol agents, building walls and barriers, and adding sensors. Yet the incentives for migration remained unchanged. American employers were hungry for cheap labor. Mexicans and Central Americans were fleeing poverty and violence.

And smugglers connected the two.

Kamala Harris and Attorney General Merrick Garland were the first to seriously attack this problem, starting shortly after Joe Biden took office. But it was obviously a long-term effort with little immediate effect. As US job demand grew after the pandemic, the big gangs ramped up their efforts and moved hundreds of thousands of migrants from places like Guatemala to the US border and then to safe houses, all for a single package price of about $10,000.

This is why I endlessly harp on things like E-Verify: Walls and border fortifications just don't work. Supply and demand won't be denied so easily, and as long as the demand is there, supply will find a way.

Of course, maybe E-Verify wouldn't work either. It wouldn't affect demand, after all, just make it harder for employers to fill that demand. If demand is strong enough, it might not matter.

But it's the only option with any chance of success—which is precisely why it gets so little attention. The business community in the US doesn't mind border theater, but it does mind things that might work. So they oppose E-Verify on specious anti-regulation grounds and Republican leaders go along with a wink and a nudge. The cynicism is sort of jaw dropping.

53 thoughts on “As the border becomes more militarized, so do smuggling gangs

  1. antiscience

    Two things more are needed:
    (1) make e-verify much, much more difficult to cheat. That means biometric ID.
    (2) make the penalty for not using e-verify (and hence hiring an undocumented immigrant) be hard time, 10yr in federal prison. And the bounty for turning in an employer doing that, a free green card for the person turning that employer in, and their immediate family.

    That second part is crucial. You wanna end undocumented economic migration? Make the penalty for doing it eye-watering and the gain from turning somebody in big enough, and it'll happen overnight. Overnight.

    1. Anandakos

      Um, ten years is ridiculous, and you know it. You're a MAGAt trolling.

      There are two new names in the comments to this article. I guess Kevin has been "discovered" by the Slime Brigade.

  2. CoH49

    Kevin omits the greater reason for Republican opposition. Effective E-Verify cards would be de facto voter cards. Just add a green stripe for green card holders.

  3. middleoftheroaddem

    Two points

    1. I have seen either party really push for E Verify: so its not just 'the business community.'

    2. The current version of E Verify is inadequate. If one got a real biometric national ID, an accurate national database (E Verify has about a 5% - 7% error rate), real penalties for not using E Verify etc THEN the system could work (maybe).

    1. Bones99

      It is the business community. Both parties are mostly the representatives of the wealthy and the business community. There's a reason that Joe Biden is the "most pro-labor president" when his actual bona fides in office are rather tepid and include throwing the rail workers' union in front of the train during their contract negotiations. This is an older study, but it's not like things have demonstrably changed for the better over the last decade.

      https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained

    1. Atticus

      To do that we'd need to be able to effectively track them and expel them if they overstay. Will liberals be ok with tracking them down and kicking them out? Or are you suggesting we just have open borders and no mechanism to track these foreign workers?

      1. FrankM

        We had open borders for 150 years. We didn't track people who came in. History books don't mention any catastrophe ensuing. This was the norm for most of the earth's history. The idea that borders are for keeping people out is a recent development.

        I love it when people say "My grandparents came here legally. I don't see why these people can't". Completely neglecting the fact that their grandparents came in a time of open borders.

        1. Atticus

          So, your answer is, yes, you are ok with the open borders.

          I suspect many other democrats/liberals feel the same as you. Yet democrats get all bent out of shape when republicans suggest dems want (or at least ok with) open borders.

          1. iamr4man

            I’ve seen a lot of Republicans say they are ok with gunning down illegal immigrants, or killing them with electricity or piranhas. Yet Republicans get all bent out of shape when democrats suggest Republicans want (or at least are ok with) killing illegal immigrants.

        2. KawSunflower

          That's why they should be asked if their ancestors arrived before or after inspections began at Ellis Island - or perhaps which tribe invited them.

          We are all standing on stolen ground.

      2. ScentOfViolets

        HAHAHAHAHAHA! You so funny. Will liberals 'conservatives' be ok with tracking them down and kicking them out? Fixed it for ya, ya trolling POS.

      3. jdubs

        THE ONLY WAY WE CAN MAKE IT EASY FOR THOSE PEOPLE TO WORK IS IF I CAN STILL ROUND EM UP AND DRAG EM OUT!!!
        IF YOU DONT SUPPORT ME ON THIS THEN I HAVE CLEVERLY TRICKED YOU!! I WINZ!!

        Lol, poor stupid, bigots.

      4. Dr Brando

        No, you don't have to track them down - just treat it like overstaying any other visa, which can lead to being kicked out through existing processes.

        Of course the people will have to register and be tracked (also like a current system we have that is just too strict). Employers would be held to a standard then because there would be no shortage of legal workers. Part of the program could even be placement to help people get to where there is work for them.

        And their payroll taxes could go towards funding the administration of the program and their Medicaid

    2. middleoftheroaddem

      Dr Brando - while I agree with your perspective, I think the near term path is exceedingly challenging.

      1. The US system requires broad electoral control or bi partisan consensus. Either are very difficult to attain now.
      2. Clearly there is not an easy, bi partisan consensus. Note those who believe the recent 'bi partisan' bill had broad GOP support, before Trump's influence, would likely be wrong.'
      3. The more limited areas that MIGHT allow consensus (Dreamers, our high skilled immigration) are still challenging: folks, mostly on the pro migrant side/Democrats, don't seem to want to allow separation of these specific use cases, from the broader issue.
      4. Politically for the GOP fighting about immigration is likely superior to solving problems.

      1. FrankM

        Nothing any Democrat is for would ever achieve "broad GOP support". Biden could propose zero capital gains taxes and the GOP would be wondering what to do. "Shit. Biden is for it so now we have to be against it!"

  4. Atticus

    Florida is a red state and we passed a statute last year that requires any employer with more 25 employees to use E-Verify on all new hires.

  5. iamr4man

    What’s wanted is cheap labor and a willingness to do the dirty work. What isn’t wanted is their children who by virtue of being born here are citizens and eligible for education and social welfare. Since the kids are poor, groups of them hang out in parks and malls, many of them speaking Spanish and making white people feel threatened. White parents dislike paying for programs needed to assist them in speaking English, pay for their medical needs, and feeding them meals. They don’t like the idea of their own children befriending them or dating them. Worst of all, the children of immigrants don’t want to do the labor their parents do. They want the things other Americans want. Since other avenues aren’t open to them, some turn to crime to get the things they see others have. This causes more people to resent and fear them.
    I think that this is a more complex problem than can be addressed by something like E-Verify. The steady stream of cheap labor is what’s wanted and needed. An effective E-Verify program would lead to other methods of acquiring this want/need. Those methods would likely end up with new or recycled (the bracero program) programs to exploit poor people but give them no avenue for betterment.
    I suspect that under Trump, if his draconian immigration policies are effective, there will be some sort of return to the bracero program and also that native born citizenship won’t be applicable should they have children.

    1. sonofthereturnofaptidude

      It would require an amendment to the Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship, so I don't think that's even a remote possibility right now.

      While I understand that there are lots of white parents who feel the way you describe them feeling, not all of them do. I know this because I have taught the children of immigrants alongside native-born white students for years in white-majority school districts in the Northeast. It might be that the white parents you are describing might not be the majority in every part of the country.

      1. iamr4man

        With regard to birthright citizenship I think you underestimate how utterly corrupt our current Supreme Court is and the lengths they will go to to twist the Constitution to something that pleases Trump.
        With regard to white parents you don’t need a majority to feel that way, just a large and vehement minority. Also, how things are in the cities and how they are in agricultural areas are very different, at least here in California.

        1. aldoushickman

          "With regard to birthright citizenship I think you underestimate how utterly corrupt our current Supreme Court is and the lengths they will go to to twist the Constitution to something that pleases Trump."

          Since there are only two ways to be a citizen--by birth, and by naturalization--ending birthright citizenship would call into question the citizenship of nearly every citizen in this country.

          I mean, I'm a citizen by dint of being born here. So are, I'd imagine, a majority if not all of the SCOTUS justices. Now, maybe somebody could say that it's ok because their parents were citizens, but if they likewise were only citizens through birth, this gets real messy real fast.

          1. iamr4man

            Were your parents here legally? I suspect that would be the dividing line. Or perhaps were they both citizens? Do you think Trump wouldn’t use the threat of deportation as a means of control?
            I thought the idea that the President is immune from prosecution even if he personally guns down the Supreme Court justices he doesn’t like was absurd. The current Supreme Court thought otherwise.

            1. aldoushickman

              "Were your parents here legally? I suspect that would be the dividing line. Or perhaps were they both citizens?"

              Sure, but the ability for a court to say "ah, plainly the 14th amendment means that you are a citizen if your parents are citizens so I guess that's how it will be from now on because I guess we were just doing it wrong for a century and a half" and not create an enormous mess is pretty limited--the Supremes would have very little ability to assess how many people would be swept up in their decision.

              After all, the first thing that would happen is that some MAGA state election official would start purging "non-citizens" from the rolls, and demanding that erstwhile, say, senior citizens (particularly in communities of color) demonstrate that their parents were both citizens before they could vote. Try proving that dead people born in the 1920s (or earlier!) were citizens or not. How many (millions?) people would be swept up in that?

              Is that a mess SCOTUS wants to touch? Maybe a few of the nutters, but I doubt that Roberts and Barrett do.

              1. iamr4man

                You have more faith in Roberts and Barrett than I do. Note that Roberts was all in with presidential immunity.and Barrett at least partially so.

                1. shapeofsociety

                  Yeah... before the immunity ruling I had some hope that we'd only need to replace one of the conservatives to get a reasonably sane SCOTUS. Sadly, it's now clear that we'll need two.

                2. aldoushickman

                  They surprised me on things like Ohio v. EPA (Barrett dissent was spot on) and in declining to stay MATS and the 111 stationary source standards. I look forward to the day when they are replaced by Dem-appointees, and in general am freaked out by a 6-3 conservative majority (something that hasn't happened since the freaking Lochner era!), but of the 6, they are the closest to sane.

                  Which gives me a bit of hope that they aren't looking to cast the citizenship of a majority of this country into an epistemological-if-not-existential crisis, even if Alito and Thomas and Gorsuch are champing at the bit to do so (and who knows what Brett I-like-beer-and-reap-the-whirlwind Kavanaugh wants to do).

            2. Anandakos

              Heck, he doesn't even need to do the gunning down. He can simply hire someone to do it, and issue a pardon. Easy-peasy.

  6. SnowballsChanceinHell

    All you need is this:

    Hiring an illegal alien becomes a strict-liability, civil offense. The party that hires the illegal alien or the party that receives the benefit of the illegal alien's services are jointly and severally liable. So if walmart hires A to clean the floors, and A hires B, and B hires the illegal alien, then Walmart, A, and B are jointly and severally liable. Any contrary contractual language or indemnification agreements are unenforceable.

    The penalty is statutory damages that accrue daily while the illegal alien is employed.

    There is a qui tam provision that awards the statutory damages (or a portion thereof) to the person that files the action.

    The illegal alien can file the action (and in so doing establish all the predicate facts for the penalty). The illegal alien then gets the damages (and gets deported, but whatever).

  7. Murc

    The number of people who are obssessed with "what kind of punishment regimen will keep people out, and who can we deploy it against" who refuse to even consider "maybe people should be allowed to come here under the same rules most of our ancestors did" is perpetually annoying-slash-enraging.

    1. middleoftheroaddem

      Murc - are you suggesting that the US revert to a policy of 'who ever gets here, can stay?'

      Survey results show about about one billion people globally, that would like to migrate to the US. Even if a semi open border concept was possible, the mention of the idea is political suicide.

      1. FrankM

        Rubbish. People come for jobs. There aren't one billion jobs. Somehow we had a policy of "whoever gets here can stay" for 150 years, and it seemed to work out fine.

        1. Anandakos

          That was before movies and cell phones. "America" of "El Norte" was a figment of peoples' imaginations. And those imaginations were limited to what they saw and knew. Sure, everything would be "free", but it would still be agricultural in nature with rutted dirt roads.

          Since the 1930's people in third world cities have been able to see America for what it is (albeit shined up), and since about 2015 or so, folks in most rural areas who have a cheap cell phone can, too.

          So the pool of wanna-be Americans has enormously grown in the past decade.

          And, finally, and possibly determinatively, the Darien Gap has been proven to be dangerous but far from 100% fatal, and so the vast sea of poor people in the northern South American countries who can now essentially walk and hobo here has exploded.

          So, while your 150-year example was true, it is no longer.

          1. aldoushickman

            Yes yes, people are just oh so anxious to leave their families and communities behind and move to a completely new country where they don't understand the culture, don't speak the language, and then try to remake themselves to fit in in an alien land, so that they and their children are completely different sorts of people forever.

            For chrissakes, think for a moment about the wits and courage and drive and honest-to-god entrepeneurial spirit it takes to pull that off. How many humans really have that in them? And why in god's name would we shun the ones that do?

            1. bouncing_b

              Best comment here. Yes!

              Most people anywhere keep their heads down and muddle through any kind of badness.

              We’re the exceptional country because we get the ones with the guts to leave everything familiar in their confidence that they can start from nothing and make themselves a new life.

              When I see a woman trudging across the desert carrying her baby, I think “That’s a real American”.

      2. shapeofsociety

        One billion Americans would practically guarantee us victory in our geopolitical competition with China and all our other rivals. We would be undisputed master of the globe forever. I'm 100% for it.

      3. jdubs

        This shows a deep ignorance and unfamiliarity with immigrants and the life of immigrants. Its a hard life.

        But on a comic note, I can imagine you saying this in your best Dr Evil voice.
        ONE BILLION PEOPLE!! HOW TERRIFYING!!

  8. deathawaits

    Do we want a migrant worker program? A path to citizenship? Both? Neither?

    That is the dilemma, one solution to four options is never going to get enough traction to pass anything.

    I will not climb into those less than 4 fathom deep holes in my front yard. It appears that my fellow citizens will not do it either. Foreman says his Guatemalan is pretty good, but his Caribbean isn't.

  9. name99

    "Militarized" seems a strange word to use in this context...

    I was expecting to read an article about how the smugglinge gangs were now shooting it out with border patrol, or planning elaborate feints that pretend to be smuggling 10,000 people across point A while in fact the real operation happens at point B.
    And yet what's really happening is that, like many criminal operations, professionals have taken over to run the business better.

    I'm not sure what it says about Kevin that the word he feels best describes this is "militarization".

  10. rick_jones

    Only recently has it ballooned into a transnational, industrial-scale activity, involving sophisticated criminal groups, fleets of tractor-trailers, and hotels and warehouses that can hold hundreds of migrants a night.

    Advanced, yes. Sophisticated, certainly. Militarized, not so much.

  11. shapeofsociety

    "Illegal" immigration is a case where criminalization isn't actually being used to try to stop the behavior in question, but for a far more cynical purpose. It is actually being used to create the illusion that certain people are criminals when they are actually just workers. The system wants low-skill immigrants to come here and work for cheap, and criminalization keeps them exploitable and creates the illusion that they are cheating the system even as they do exactly what the system wants them to do. This denies them the sympathy of people who haven't done the thinking to see what's really going on. That, in turn, allows cynical politicians to get votes by pretending that they will punish the illusory criminals.

    The solution to the lie is to tell the truth. Reclassify the existing population of illusory criminals to provide them the equal protection of the law and provide a legal framework for them and for those who will come in the future to do the work the system wants from them. Above all, stop lying to the public about this.

  12. samgamgee

    It's more of a logistics and cost issue, once you get past the idea of whether there should be immigration or not. If not, then there's no discussion. If yes, then begin working through. How many and we can definitely take more. Where from? Try to balance how many from regions or just let those with easier access to fill the quota. Then fund the infra to manage it. In doing so, there would need to be a incentive for following the process, otherwise we end up in the same situation.

    Current situation is untenable. Having undocumented workers in America benefits few. The workers don't receive the protections afforded to citizens, including proper pay, and laws or rules are constantly bent to try and address these gaps.

  13. D_Ohrk_E1

    Ah yes, the issue where most Americans are simply not honest with themselves and the politicians cater to this ignorance by pushing false narratives only to trap themselves from entertaining workable solutions. If, for whatever reason no matter how uninformed it is, you really want to stop illegal immigration, you can't just use e-Verify; you must also massively scale up work visas.

    But IDK which is worse:

    ··· the folks who want to Make America White Again, or

    ··· the folks who were naturalized after they'd made their way into the country by lying or otherwise hijacking the system only to turn coat and demand the door be closed behind them.

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