Coyotes Online
Lázaro Beltrán (front) in Honduras during his journey to the U.S. Photo courtesy Beltrán
As the routes to the U.S. - Mexico border from Latin America become longer and more complex, emerging online networks are fixing everything from flights to visas to move would-be migrants from country to country
The number of people arriving at the Mexico-U.S. border soared this summer, reflecting growing economic and social instability and threats of violence in several Latin American countries.
Over the last decade, migrants from Mexico and Central America were the majority of border crossers seeking new lives in the United States, pushed north by turbulent economies and brutal gang and drug cartel violence.
Add growing unrest, the pandemic, and devastating effects of climate change in the Caribbean and South America, where even more people are looking north for living wages and security.
When the numbers are counted up, the United States Customs and Border Protection agency predicts some 2.3 million arrests of people crossing the nation’s southern border for the 2022 fiscal year (ending on Sept. 30). The number includes everyone apprehended while making an unauthorized crossing, seeking jobs, new lives and asylum. The number also includes individuals arrested more than once.
The new coyotes
But unlike so many in past waves of migrants, new arrivals are increasingly seeking out guidance for the journey north. An emerging underground network of fixers who help with airline flights and even travel visas, pose a lower degree of danger than traditional “coyotes” – the expensive human traffickers often employed by organized crime.
Criminal organizations are also moving online and the spread of misinformation is leading people to believe it is now easier to cross the U.S. border today after the lifting of restrictions imposed by former president Donald Trump. But the expanding reach of online tools in Latin America also helps some migrants reach out to family and networks of successful migrants in order to avoid dangerous smugglers.
Migration paths have historically followed patterns, and these days it is much easier to pass on good tips and informal travel advisories to others following the same routes.
Indeed, a look at some people now helping migrants make their way north revealed a community that includes average people looking to make some extra, anonymous cash.
This includes a young Mexican in Cancun, who for security, asked not to be identified.
He got into moving people, he said, when an acquaintance online asked if he could help an international visitor find low-cost airline tickets and a room to rent – just like so many visitors do when they travel to Cancun. That turned into help getting travelers to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“A person who I rented a room to, but did not travel north, was the one who told me that he had more friends,” the unexpected smuggler said. “I rented the rooms and bought plane tickets for them and they went to Mexicali (on the Mexican border with California.)”
A long, winding migrant trail
New, tech-savvy assistance is needed because of the difficulty – and distance – in moving from countries like Cuba.
Lázaro Beltrán, 25, used online guides to help him get from his home in Havana, Cuba, to the U.S. border city of Yuma, Arizona. It took him many months, he said, traveling to Russia and stopping to work for spells in Europe and Central America. He finally arrived, legally, in Mexico and then made his way north to the border, where, he said, he applied for asylum in the United States.
On his winding route, he bought and sold clothes for profit, which he then used to obtain travel visas. Beltrán told palabra his goal was to join his father in Miami, which on the map is a short distance from Havana.
‘It was like being reborn.’
The reason for the long journey? Beltrán said it is much harder for Cubans to leave the country than in years past when the U.S. gave asylum to most Cubans who managed to reach dry land in the United States.
“There are still people leaving Cuba on rafts,” Beltrán said. “But it is very difficult for someone to arrive here at the moment. They are no longer giving residency (to us) and are deporting people back to Cuba.”
So Beltrán got help, online, figuring out where to go to find work and how to get travel visas.
“It was like being reborn,” Beltrán said, describing what he felt when he arrived at the U.S. border. “It restarted my system. I was born again. The future here ... I see millions of friends who have lived here for a long time. (One guy told me) ‘Look! Look at the car I bought.’ And then I thought, that boy, back in Cuba, couldn't even buy a bicycle … Here he works hard, has a car. That's what I want.”
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Jorge Melchor is a freelance visual and data journalist whose video, online, print and broadcast work has appeared on outlets including NBC News, The New York Times, the History Channel, and the Financial Times. He has worked as a freelance journalist in Mexico and the U.S. and currently lives just outside New York City.