The US Citizens Recruited to Smuggle Migrants

crossing the southern border into the US. Some are seeking asylum from violence in their home countries. Many more are hoping to find work in a path of poverty. Tens of thousands are able to evade detection because they pay so called coyotes. Those are the guides who know the illicit roots into the country. Once across, they've still got to get past highway border patrol checkpoints, and that's where

a largely hidden workforce comes in. People in the US, many of them US citizens, who are themselves struggling to stay afloat, are recruited by smugglers to transport people who are hidden in vehicles. One of them was Dennis Wilson, who you heard at the top. Just now, My colleague Julia Love went to Texas to report for Bloomberg Business Week about this underground industry and about the consequences for people like Dennis Wilson and others who break the law

and get caught. Julia, with so much attention on the border with Mexico, it's become more difficult to get across. What's the most common way people do it these days? So for this story, I have been focusing on the Rio Grand Valley. There's many different ways to cross the border, but in the Rio Grand Valley the border is the river, and so migrants generally crossed the river on small inflatable rafts.

I've actually, um, you know, witnessed these crossings on a right along with um border patrol and they, you know, will sort of border raft with a handful of other migrants and sort of raft across the river. So they cross the river in boats and then they are ferried by the smuggling networks into a system of stash houses. Because although they've made it onto US soil um, there

are still more hurdles to clear. We'll come back to those hurdles in a bit, But first I asked Julia to describe what it takes for migrants just to get into one of those boats. Each journey is a little bit different, but oftentimes migrants made contact with smugglers when they are still in their home countries before they depart.

They make their way through through the America's through Central America, through Mexico, and then when they reach the U. S. Mexico border, that's um, you know, one of the most complicated parts of the journey. Law enforcement sources tell me that they usually don't make that it across the Rio Grand the River border without working with a coyote, because they generally have to make a payment to the tartel

in order to cross. But by the time that they've made it to Mexico, advocates say that generally migrants have connected with coyotes in part because Mexico is just such a dangerous place for migrants and refugees. And why is that. The cartels just have a strangel hold on Mexico and they've diversified their business far beyond drugs. Um They see that there's a lot of money to be made in moving migrants and they want a piece of that, and

so they have really preyed on migrants. They frequently kidnapped them,

destory them. It's an incredibly dangerous environment for migrants and so for some traveling with the coyote gives them, you know, some semblance of safety, but certainly by the time they reach the U. S. Mexito border, that is a territory that the Mexican drug cartels just monitor so closely that if they're going to make it across, they will have to make a payment for the right of passage, and the smoothest way to do that is with a coyote

that has a relationship with the cartel. So you mentioned a payment, and this becomes a big thing because there's payments that kind of every stop of the way. What kind of money are we talking about? These are obviously

people who don't have a lot. The amount that migrants pay really depends on how far they're traveling, where they're departing from the International Organization for Migration told us that, you know, migrants from Central America might pay I believe it was five to ten thousand dollars, and then migrants departing from Ecuador might pay fifteen thousand dollars to twenty thousand dollars and then for extra continental migrants, those traveling

from Africa or Asia, they're commonly spending north of forty dollars for the journey. And Julia're right that once there across the border, that's when they encounter this whole other set of hurdles on the U. S. Side, Is that right, Yes, So they crossed the river in boats and then they are ferried by the smuggling networks into a system of

stash houses. Because although they've made it onto US soil, um, there are still more hurdles to clear because the US government has a big system of checkpoints that are located um, you know, sixty seventy miles north of the border, where they conduct traffic stops to stand passing cars to see if they have migrants on board. In her story, Julia writes that this is where the coyotes are smugglers on

the U. S side come in. The border patrol can't stop and inspect every vehicle that passes through the checkpoints, so they look for vehicles and drivers that seem out of the ordinary. To minimize that suspicion, the smugglers often recruit Americans who they believe border agents will wave through.

I'd say from the cases I've seen, they're often um transported in small groups from the river to a stash house, and then once they're in that stash house, they wait, they wait until it's their turn to be gathered up into a group and taken across the checkpoint. And sometimes this happens and you know, a few people in the trunk of a car, and other times it's a much

larger group in a trailer. The American tyotes are certainly part of a system that has been influenced by the title along the Way, because those checkpoints that extend so far into the United States, there's a real need for a labor force of um, you know, people on US soil, often US citizens, to sort of operate that last leg of the journey. And uh, from the cases that I've reviewed, Sometimes people here about these opportunities on social media. They might see a post um, you know, hey, reach out

to me if you need a few thousand dollars. Other times they hear about the jobs through friends of friends. But it seems like the smuggling networks are always interested in deepening the bunch of people that they have to do these jobs. Julia's reporting focuses on the story of Dennis Wilson. He's a Texan who is recruited to drive migrants across the checkpoints. He spoke to recently about how he got into this kind of work back in Well.

It all started. I was panhandling money at a at a local gas station close to where I lived at two gentlemen approached me and asked me if i'd be interested in moving some farm equipment. I was kind of panhandling money to, you know, just support my habit and my living arrangements where I was staying at. And these

two gentleman's pulled up. One offered me three dollars, another one offered me two dollars, and then they both they put most of me over to the vehicle and asked me if I would be interested in making a hundred dollars a day. And I had told them that I could make that in a couple of hours where I was at just panhandling, panhandling, And then they asked me if I would be interested. I told him no, I could make you know, I would make that in a couple of hours. Well, then they had asked me if

I was there. I was interested in making five dollars a day and said, well, that would take me about two days, you know to come up with that kind of money, didn't They asked me about making a thousand dollars a day, and I jumped on it. Look quick, Uh there was thousand dollars a day. Was just too much to believe. The men told him to make that money, all he had to do was drive a hay balor from one Texas town to another. Hey, bailor makes those big round bills you see in fields by the highway.

It's a big machine that's pulled behind a truck. If Dennis was wary, he didn't ask why that job was worth quite so much money. He took them up on the offer that picked me up. They drove me from here to Edinburgh, Texas, which is on the of the United States side the Rear Grand Valley. They put me up in an hotel room for a couple of days, and then we shut out one morning about four thirty in the morning, and I had to drive that pull that hate bailor that across the checkpoint in full furious

the checkpoint. The border patrol set up the check station and they asked you if you're you're a United States citizen, and if you were, they passed. They pulled you on through. There was no physical search. I thank god there wasn't no physical search that morning because going towards Houston, there was a piece of metal flap that was flapping in

the wind. So when I pulled over on the side of the road and a little bity town called Berkelear, Texas, which is a speed trap for dps like to sit in there and catch feeders, and I climbed up on I got out of the vehicle, climbed up on top of the fixed that flap, and I looked down inside and there were people inside. I had ten illegal immigrants inside that hay Bailor. Did you know that there were people in that hey Bailor when you set off on

the drive? No, I did not. But this particular hay Baler didn't have no no inner workings because they had taken all the inner workings out of it. There was ten people inside one of them that wanted that you could put ten people inside of one. Dennis, what went through your mind when you looked into that hay Baler and saw people? I was devastated. I was extremely devastated. Our story continues after the break. You heard Dennis say he was devastated when he found out there were people

hidden inside the hay balor he was driving. So he confronted one of the men who recruited him. I called him on the phone and I told them, what are y'all trying to do to me one of my Why am I hauling people? They didn't have nothing to say at that moment. I just kept driving. When he got to his destination, the men handed him more than double the thousand dollars he'd been promised, and in the months that followed, Dennis continued to take driving jobs, hauling more

and more people and making a lot of money. I didn't do it just for the money. UM. I did for the money for the longest part because I am. I'm an addict and recovery. Uh. When I say addict and recovery, I was a crystal meth user for many years. Uh. And that's and the money's the money was there, and it was even though it wasn't legitimate money. It's supported it's supported my drug added And so each time you made the drive after that first time, you knew there

were people. Oh yes, oh yes, I knew there are people when you approached those checkpoints. What went through your mind? I kept telling myself every time I drove through, you know, this is this is a physical fellow me, this is get me in a lot of trouble. I didn't look at it like that. Then. I was more I was more into what what Dennis wanted to do, not the consequences behind it. I was looking for my next bitch. Julia says this is a pretty common strategy for the

smuggling network. Recruiters find vulnerable people who need the money and offer them a lot of it, and at least at first, not let on what it's for. These parts of southern Texas are some of the poorest counties in the state. There's a lot of people in really desperate need, and for people who are, you know, working minimum wage jobs or perhaps unemployed like Dennis, it can be very tempting when you have the chance to make a few

thousand dollars for a day's work. And if they're stopping people at checkpoints, why don't they just discover them all the time. How is it that they're able to evade the checkpoints? There are just so many tars passing through the checkpoint each day that it would simply be impractical for the government to stop and search everyone, and so many tars do make it through. One thing that really has stood out to me is just the number of

prosecutions and how they have increased over the years. Last year, according to some statistics from a research institute at Syracuse University, there weren't merely six thousands of these prosecutions record number. And these are coyotes who are prosecuting. These are people who are being prosecuted for human smuggling um that's generally driving minors to the checkpoints or perhaps running a stash

house where they stay in the United States. They're taking on a great amount of risk for that pay day. Early one morning in twenty nineteen, Dennis's luck ran out. He told me the story of the day he got caught.

And most of the time it was like four thirty, between four thirty and five thirty in the morning when I went through, because the shift changed, they don't start to all the vehicles at that time of the morning, So at six o'clock with shift change, that's when they bring in the dogs and stuff like that there wasn't no dogs at night or in the early morning hours, and they didn't come out at all when range. You were doing the drive as you've done before, but it

turned out differently at the checkpoint. What happened, Well, I got to the checkpoint, like at six o'clock on the morning that I got arrested. I pulled up to the checkpoint um the officer said, he looked in my direction. I looked nervous to him and the other officer that was there, he had a dog and the dog's name was Weston. I think, what's his name? And they said the dog and learned the other man that there were there was something in the in the back of the RVA.

I started moving him in r vs after I graduated from moving used in the hay bailer, why did you switch the RVs because I could get more people in there. The officer went to the door of the RV, opened the door and he said, oh my god, you need to put he said, he mote the meal you need to pull in the secondary lane. And they came over there and they said, you had fifty people inside that RV. But there was nothing like endangement that they weren't endangered

beading in any means. I mean they had clean clothes on, they had food to eat, and they had water drink, and there was a nice atmosphere inside that RV. It was I mean it was clean. I was immediately arrested, taken into the Border patrol station. Now I was interrogated brief upon what was going on and what did you do? Um? I told the truth. I told exactly what I knew. You know, you don't have to do this. You have to you don't have to say nothing. You can wait

till you have attorney president. I said, no, I'm willing to speak. I was trying to live in that line. We'll be right back. Dennis. Were you relieved at all that you've been cut? Yes, yes, I've been very relieved. Why is that because I've been a drug I've been a drug addict for the last fifty years. So they asked you about what you've been doing, and you told them the whole story. Yes, sir. Dennis was sentenced to fifty two months in federal prison. I've got into a

residential drug drug program while I was in prison. I got out eight two months early. I went to a half way house. I'm a freeman right now. I mean I'm I'm still on paper. I still have a probation office. I'm on probation for the next two years. When you look back at the everything you went through, would you do it again? No? Not just no, but hell no. Uh. It took three and a half years of my life

away from me. Dennis, you've seen the border problem close up from a point of view not many people have. If you were in charge, how would you fix it. I'm not a political man by any means. I don't like our president. I just but when when he opened the borders up, I figured that was away for some, that was the way up with every get a little bit further in life. Well, the wall is no solution because the build a wall, they're just going to either dig, dig under it, or climb over it. They want asylum

in the United States, Give it to them. Mexican Mexican citizens. They want asylum here because they have a their their countries and poverty. Give it to Dennis Wilson. Thank you for talking with me today. You're quite welcome. Dennis Wilson is just one of thousands of people who have been prosecuted for taking party in smuggling migrants across the border. So what is the US government doing to try to

discourage people from taking on this kind of work. So this has been a prosecution of human smugglers has really been a priority in both the Trump and Biden administrations. Prosecutions have continued to rise under Under Biden, they recently announced a new Joint Task Force Alpha that is dedicated to prostituting these tribes and has announced the dismantling of a pretty big smuggling rain. But there's different stools of thought.

The government only has so many resources, and I've taught to some who think that the government would do well to focus on the bigger cases that help them go higher up the chain and target the people who are really running these networks. Others feel that it's important to send a message of deterrence and prosecute even the low level offenders so that the message is out there that you will face consequences if you if you do this work. From the ones who I have interviewed, most do know

that it is a crime. There is a sign on highway to night One, you know, advising them that it's a felony to do so. But I think that for most of them, they are just so sort of preoccupied with the desperation of their own lives that they feel that it's a necessary risk that they're undertaking. And then they also do feel that they are helping someone in need, and so I think it's that combination that helps them justify the rest they take. Julia Love thanks so much

for talking with me today. Thank you for having me. You can read more of Julia Loves reporting at Bloomberg dot com. Thank you for listening to us here at The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. From more shows from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you listen. The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Virgolina, Our senior producer is Katherine Fink, Our producer is Rebecca Chassan, and our associate producer is Sam Gebauer. Raphael I'm Seeley is our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin. I'm west Casova will be back on Monday with another Big Take. Have a great weekend, um hm