US EditionCartels Using Teens to Smuggle People Across Border, Officials Warn
- In early May, Donald Soper, a 55-year-old Air Force veteran, was detained by Border Patrol after driving through the Interstate 19 checkpoint with four undocumented immigrants concealed in the trunk of his car.
- This arrest reflects a wider trend where economic hardship and cartel tactics recruit U.S. Citizens and teenagers to smuggle people and drugs across the border.
- Smugglers typically act as subcontractors paid a few hundred dollars per run while migrants pay several thousand dollars to cross to Tucson or Phoenix.
- In 2015, U.S. Citizens or legal residents accounted for 68 percent of 2,100 smuggling arrests, showing their growing involvement in trafficking operations.
- The rise of citizen and teenage smugglers complicates enforcement, as juveniles face state charges and many adults operate as small links in larger smuggling networks.
10 Articles
10 Articles
In Naples, the Camorra, which has become one of the city's main employers, does not hesitate to use teenagers and even ten-year-old children for its trafficking. A team of TF1 met several of these young people. (International).
NewsNation
Cartels using teens to smuggle people across border, officials warn
(NewsNation) — Mexican cartels are turning to teenagers to smuggle humans and drugs into the U.S. illegally, knowing they’re more difficult to prosecute in federal courts. Now, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers are riding with agents to make the arrests themselves and prosecute the teens in state courts. NewsNation’s Ali Bradley rode along with troopers when they found a 16-year-old smuggler from Mexico whom authorities had encountered …
The Criminal Code does not consider the recruitment of young people to be an aggravated crime.
Two Phoenix teenagers were arrested by Tucson, Arizona Sector Border Patrol agents after attempting to smuggle four undocumented individuals into the Tohono O'odham Nation. The reckless and risk-taking teens engaged in a vehicle pursuit in a Honda Civic, endangering the lives of all occupants. The pursuit ended abruptly after the vehicle was stopped due to the teens' erratic driving off the road. Border Patrol agents, assisted by CBPAMO, located…
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