Migrant smuggling in trailers a booming business in Texas

But experts say even without Title 42, impoverished migrants coming to the U.S. to work will continue to rely on smugglers, as there is no legal way for them to enter the country. In fact, many of the people who died in San Antonio came seeking employment, not to file asylum claims.

Mexican cartels that used to specialize in drug running have taken over the human smuggling business at the Southwest border and turned to brutal tactics – rape, torture and extortion – far different than the mom-and-pop coyote businesses that used to guide people across the Rio Grande.

The Border Patrol launched deterrence strategies in the ‘90s during the tenure of President Bill Clinton, concentrating agents in areas where immigrants frequently crossed into the U.S., to force the most determined to take dangerous routes across deserts and remote scrub brush where untold thousands have died from dehydration and exposure.

But people keep coming in search of better lives. And with the federal government continuing to pour resources into border enforcement – U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the nation’s largest federal law enforcement agency – following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, smuggling has become an estimated $13 billion business.

“So more and more, these smugglers or coyotes have become networked, more organized in associations, organizations, not just people here and there, like before,” said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a George Mason University professor who received a State Department grant to study organized crime and human trafficking in Central America and Mexico.

The truckers caught smuggling migrants in Laredo this year are not all locals – some are from North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida and Louisiana. Correa-Cabrera believes it is illogical to think they are entrepreneurs acting independently.

“It’s not like I’m a driver and I’m going to do it because it’s a business,” she said. “There must be some type of arrangement that maybe even incorporates corrupt authorities.”

“It’s very difficult to know how they do it, what they are thinking, what are their tactics,” she added. “And it seems that sometimes they understand how to evade X-rays and certain surveillance practices of law enforcement.”

So it struck her as wrong that only one person, driver James Matthew Bradley Jr., was charged after 10 of the 70 to 100 immigrants he transported in his trailer with no functioning air conditioning from Laredo to San Antonio in July 2017 died from hyperthermia.

His cargo had taken turns breathing through the one unobstructed ventilation hole in his trailer and banging on its walls to get his attention, according to his criminal complaint. He took a plea deal and was sentenced to life in federal prison.

Correa-Cabrera has interviewed dozens of immigrants about coming to the U.S. She said they pay fees ranging from $3,000 to $20,000, depending on where they start their trip, or if they hire smugglers to bring children unaccompanied by their parents or guardians.

But, she said, just a handful she spoke to were transported in trailers because it is more expensive than foot guides. “I mean it’s the VIP trip. That’s what they tell me.”

Those smuggled in trailers typically make agreements with a different person. “They don’t deal with the driver,” she said.

While truckers convicted of transporting immigrants who die in their trailers face punishment of up to life in prison or the death penalty, the typical sentence for human smuggling is relatively light.

Of the 3,551 people convicted of the federal crime in fiscal year 2021, their average prison sentence was 15 months, according to U.S. Sentencing Commission data.

Dedrick Coleman, 49, of DeSoto, a Dallas suburb, pleaded guilty in April after a K-9 alerted to his trailer at the Laredo North checkpoint and Border Patrol agents found 95 people hidden in his trailer.

Despite the number of noncitizens, he was sentenced to just 24 months in late June.

Casso, the former Laredo assistant U.S. attorney, said judges are constrained by sentencing guidelines that dictate how much time a defendant should receive based on their charged offenses and criminal history.

“It’s really like tic-tac-toe. There’s not much figuring,” he said.

But, he added, judges can depart down from the guidelines if the defendant cooperates by testifying against their associates, for instance. Or up, if firearms were involved.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, which includes Laredo, declined to discuss trends. But it seems not a week goes by without it announcing at least one conviction of a human-smuggling trucker.

On Monday, Marthin Rueda Alcorta, a 36-year-old Mexican national, pleaded guilty to transporting 110 people in his refrigerated trailer after he was caught May 24 at the Laredo North checkpoint. As noted in his plea deal, he had sought out a migrant smuggler for a job and agreed to drive the group from Laredo to San Antonio for $5,000.

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