Caitlin Dickson connects the current border crisis to the Mexican drug cartels, who have taken over the business of smuggling migrants into the US:
Under the cartel-run migration model, migrants typically make arrangements to cross from their hometowns and are told to find their own way to a certain point where they will meet the coyote. The city of Altar, for example, about 112 miles from Nogales in the Mexican state of Sonora, is a popular launching point for border crossers, and as such, it has become a center of immigration commerce. Here, smugglers often tell migrants to wait for days before they cross, during which time they are nickel-and-dimed into buying stealth desert-crossing gear—camouflage backpacks, black water bottles, and carpet booties—from vendors who set up shop around town.
For those coming from Central America, just getting to a meeting place like Altar often means riding buses or atop freight trains from southern Mexico where they may be subjected to robbery, beatings, and getting thrown off the train by cartel lackeys. Those who make it will continue to encounter crippling fees at practically every leg of their journey to the border. Refusal or inability to pay may result in migrants being forced to carry backpacks filled with marijuana, getting kidnapped in order to extort money from their families, or being murdered on the spot.
The cartels are also partly responsible for the gang violence driving these children out of Central America in the first place. Ongoing Dish coverage of the migrant refugee crisis here.
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