With the latest migrant caravan from Central America straining resources at the U.S-Mexico border, the people smuggling these migrants across the border often are not the drug cartels, according to a RAND Corp. study released Monday.
Transnational criminal organizations are not even the main culprits for the smuggling of migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to the report.
“We learned that human smuggling involves many different types of actors and that we could not credibly distinguish most criminal organizations' activities and revenues from those of other actors, including ad hoc groups and independent operators, that engage in human smuggling,” said Victoria Greenfield, lead author on the report. “At best, we could provide a broad range for the revenues to all types of human smugglers.”
Central American migrants who were apprehended at the border often hire smugglers to help them cross into the U.S. or pay others at some point during their journey, the report found.
For the smugglers, it is good business. RAND estimated that smugglers raked in between $200 million to $2.3 billion in 2017. A portion of that, however, do go to the drug cartels through taxes, or pisos, collected from the migrants.
Those taxes amounted to around $30 million to $180 million in 2017.
Besides the added income, the cartels may also have benefited in other ways, such as diverting attention from their other illicit activities or recruiting or forcing migrants to smuggle drugs for them, according to RAND.
The nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND conducted the study on behalf of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
