Officials fear growing recklessness of coyotes

McALLEN - Human smugglers are employing increasingly risky and dangerous methods to transport illegal immigrants since security tightened along the U.S.-Mexico border, law enforcement officials said.

"They're getting less area they can successfully enter," said Oscar Saldaña, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman.

"That's why were seeing more of these desperate acts. And unfortunately, we anticipate there's going to be more of these types of events."

On Thursday a Ford F-150 carrying more than 20 illegal immigrants collided with another vehicle on Expressway 83 in Peñitas, leaving three dead and another 14 injured.

They were the latest victims of what appears to be a growing and often fatal trend in the Rio Grande Valley of human smugglers, or coyotes, filling cars and trucks with loads of immigrants far beyond the vehicles' capacity and then driving at high speeds, often to elude law enforcement.

Law enforcement's presence here has increased significantly over the past six years, since President Bush ordered federal law enforcement agencies to tighten control of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The number of Border Patrol agents in the Valley has risen from about 1,200 in 2002 to more than 2,200 this year, Saldaña said. And local law enforcement agencies - from small-town police departments to the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office - have been awarded a series of state and federal grants to dedicate officers to border security details.

"You're talking about human smuggling and drugs," Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. "There's no doubt in the last five years the attitude of the human smuggler has taken a 180. They have transformed themselves into a commodity broker that has no limitations to getting their cargo to where they want to go."

‘Abrasive and violent'

Less publicized than their counterparts in the drug trafficking industry, human smuggling organizations tend to be highly structured, with resources and operatives spread across the globe, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Janice Ayala, who directs investigations between Laredo and Brownsville.

Fees range anywhere from $300 to $50,000 per person, depending on where the immigrant is coming from and wants to go, as well as the difficulty of the route, she said. A person traveling from China might have one smuggler take them to Central America, another take them to Mexico, another to take them across the border and another to move them through the United States.

"These are organizations moving people from one country to another to another, so they need a very sophisticated network in order to do that," Ayala said.

"Most of these alien smuggling organizations are paying passage to a large (drug) cartel, because they have the routes to the U.S."

Officials uniformly expressed dismay at what Treviño described as the "abrasive and violent" attitude of the coyotes.

"Back in the day, a coyote would take money for helping people across, but they were maybe more of a compañero, more of a surrogate," Treviño said.

‘Our worst enemy'

The Mexican government, at both the state and federal level, is in the midst of a public relations campaign to warn Mexican nationals of the growing danger of crossing the border illegally.

Billboards in the United States and Mexico caution against traveling with coyotes, and government-written newspaper columns tell horror stories of immigrants drowning in the Rio Grande or being left to die in the desert heat.

"We share the tragic stories of migrants, so people can talk to relatives and discourage them," said Miriam Medel, vice consul of the Mexican Consulate in McAllen.

"(The coyotes) are our worst enemy, and we're always trying to tell people not to trust them."

In Washington, D.C., where Congress is expected to address immigration reform again next year, the recent worsening of the human smuggling problem has not as yet gained traction as a political issue, said Douglas Rivlin, a spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant advocacy group.

In fact, despite heightened interest early in this presidential campaign, illegal immigration has fallen off as a talking point for the candidates over the last two months, he said.

"I think (some people are aware) in terms of just some of the press coverage we've seen about immigrants being held captive by smugglers, but not in terms of people being aware that we're in a new era of smuggling," Rivlin said.
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James Osborne covers McAllen and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4428.