Some migrants who enter the U.S. illegally are being helped by American citizens in what is a lucrative business. Just hours after one woman arrived on U.S. soil illegally, she met with CBS News in a safehouse near the southern border in New Mexico.
The woman said she was desperate to escape the violence in the Central Mexico city of Zacatecas. She paid smugglers over $15,000 to get to the U.S. She met with CBS News overnight, and by morning, she was dropped off at her final destination in the U.S.
Her journey, CBS News learned, was facilitated by a network of Americans, smuggling people from across the nearly 2,000 mile-long stretch of the southern border deep into the U.S.
CBS News got an inside look at the operation, with the man who smuggled her agreeing to speak only after his identity was masked.
“Americans, we’re doing this, we’re the ones taking them across,” said the smuggler, who CBS News is referring to as Joe.
Joe, who says he was born and raised in the Southwest, estimates that he has smuggled “close to 500” people into the U.S.
Here’s an idea of how his portion of the operation works. First, Joe is sent a location by a smuggling organization.
“I get GPS sent to me, ‘Come out here.’ And they get in my vehicle, and then we head on out,” Joe explained.
After migrants cross into the U.S. illegally with the help of the cartels, Joe meets them and often takes them to one of several hotels or motels across the region used to stash migrants.
“We’re going to a motel that was used as, you know, a place to help illegal immigrants stay and live there for a little, like for a few days, before they would catch rides to go up north,” Joe said.
Joe acknowledges that most Americans consider what he does to be “wrong.”
“Is it wrong? Joe asked. “Yeah, a lot of people think it’s wrong. I try to say, you know, I’m doing something right to help a family out, trying to get away from that poverty, that violence, that danger in Mexico, to get to their family here in the United States.”
He tells CBS News he lost his job during the pandemic and considers this simply all about making money, and when a friend offered him an opportunity in this line of work, he took it. He disclosed he makes about $2,000 per person he helps into the U.S., sometimes moving six people a week.
He showed CBS News multiple receipts, wire transfers from the families of the people he moved. Some were for $1,500, others for $2,500. And as the U.S. is stepping up enforcement in the new Trump administration, the cost per migrant is going up.
Joe told CBS News that since the Trump administration took office, the going rate for smuggling people ovet the border and across the U.S. has doubled, and in some cases, tripled.
