You don’t even have to search very hard on the platform before you come across them: videos of people smugglers advertising a crossing to the United States. Often from Mexico, but also from other countries in Latin America such as Guatemala and Nicaragua. The coyotes (Spanish slang for smugglers) then get in touch with interested TikTok users via private messages, DMs.
“I charge $7,000”
“Tomorrow I’m leaving from Piedras Negras (a city in Mexico, next to the US border) to San Antonio (a city in Texas),” reads the text edited over the travel footage of one of the videos. A computer voice reads the text: “I charge $ 7,000, payment afterwards.”
The video below is clearly made from the window of an airplane, close to the wing. As the plane slowly ascends, the following text can be read: “Travel to the United States, pay $1,500 in cash first, then $2,500 in Mexico, and the rest upon arrival in the US.”
The smugglers do not seem to be afraid of the authorities. Some of them are in the picture themselves, answering questions from interested parties in front of the camera. “When do you leave Mexico, is there still room on the boat?” “Claro, of course,” replies a young man with more than 90,000 likes in one of the videos, wearing a cap and sunglasses. “Of course there is still room on the boat! I will post a video of the boat I am now on with illegal immigrants. We are now crossing. Watch my next video!”
Research by the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) confirms that new technologies and social media have made it easier for smugglers to exchange information, money and goods. This usually happens on everyday apps, rather than the dark web.
Correspondent Erik Mouthaan is not surprised. “Every time I talk to people who came into the US without papers, they tell me they come across smugglers through social media,” he says. “Often Facebook or WhatsApp groups, which are very popular in Central America. So I’m not surprised that TikTok is now also being used.”
TikTok informs the French news agency AFP that “promoting criminal activity” is prohibited on the platform. “We do not tolerate content that promotes human exploitation, such as human trafficking.”
The company’s CEO had to appear in a court in Washington this week for another reason, because US politicians fear that young users are not adequately protected and that the Chinese parent company is using the platform for propaganda.
According to the International Organization for Migration, it is difficult for authorities to get a grip on these illegal activities because the means used by smugglers are constantly changing and rapidly changing.
“Part of it is indeed ignorance, because the gangs behind this often have a lot of power and money,” says foreign editor Thomas van den Elshout. “But in Mexico, part is also due to unwillingness, because corruption seeps through to all layers of the authorities.” According to him, the approach to organized crime in Mexico is actually ‘very bad’ on many fronts.
‘Rotten system’
The local police, in particular, are severely underpaid and therefore have a lot of corruption, with officers involved in extorting migrants. “Local agents often don’t get a gun when they are hired,” says Van den Elshout. “They then have to buy them illegally somewhere, so that they actually come into direct contact with organized crime. Not every agent is corrupt, of course, but the system is so rotten that it becomes difficult to fight crime properly.” He doesn’t think it’s that crazy that coyotes just dare to show their faces on TikTok.
For an average of $7,000 per person, migrants place their fate in the hands of smugglers. Sometimes by plane, but more often by boat or in the back of a truck, they try to cross the US border. Pressed against each other in narrow spaces, they travel hundreds of kilometers, fearing political persecution in their native country or hoping for a better life for their family.
Black industry
“This is a huge black industry, people pay up to 10,000 euros for a safe passage,” says Mouthaan. “And then they have to work for years to pay off the debts. Sometimes they live in the house of people who advanced the amount, and they are exploited by these smugglers.” If they survive at all, because sometimes their perilous journey even ends in death.
Just this weekend, 15 migrants were found in poor conditions on a freight train traveling along the US-Mexico border. They could barely breathe in the container they were hiding in. Two of them died. The others required urgent medical attention and were taken to hospital in critical condition. On Twitter, the Secretary of Homeland Security said: “Smugglers are callous and only interested in making a profit.”
Last summer, at least 46 migrants died in a truck in the same border area as a result of heat stroke and exhaustion. According to authorities, there was no water in the cargo bed, while it was almost 40 degrees outside. It was one of the deadliest human trafficking cases on the southern border of the US.
A total of 7,667 migrants have gone missing or died trying to reach the US since 2014, according to IOM figures. Most of them went missing or lost their lives around the Mexican-US border. The number was especially high last year, when almost a fifth of the total number of missing people over the past 9 years disappeared.
In January of this year, US President Joe Biden announced that his administration would take stricter action against illegal migrants around the border with Mexico. For example, migrants must apply for asylum in advance, instead of upon arrival in the US. As of 2021, the number of people trying to reach the US is higher than ever, with some 200,000 migrants trying to cross the border each month. Biden has been under pressure for some time to do something about it.
