If anyone could understand the movement of illegal migrants through the North American porous borders, it should be US president elect Donald Trump. He is a businessman, and the economic incentives of the Human Smuggling industry are phenomenal. Organized criminal groups turn to smuggling of migrants only for the profit that it generates. This lucrative business generates billions of dollars annually. It is estimated that smuggling routes from Latin America to the United States alone yield approximately $6.6 billion each year. This high profitability attracts organized crime groups, which have developed sophisticated networks to facilitate the movement of people across borders. It is estimated that around 3 million irregular entries into the United States each year involve human smuggling.
Migrants from various regions, including Latin America, Asia, and Africa, use different routes to enter North America. These often involve perilous journeys through harsh environments and the use of multiple modes of transportation, including boats, trucks, and even charter flights.
The absence or inadequacy of national legislation to address the smuggling of migrants in many parts of the world often means that smugglers of migrants can continue to commit the crime with little fear of being brought to justice. Responses by governments focus targeting migrants, leaving smugglers, and especially organized criminal groups, which are more difficult to apprehend, at large.
The underneath pinning of all of this is of course the huge market of desperate populations around the world who are in pursuit of better living conditions.
Smugglers exploit the vulnerabilities of migrants, charging exorbitant fees and sometimes abandoning them in dangerous conditions. People are treated as goods and their lives are often put at risk: many have suffocated in containers, perished in deserts, or drowned at sea while being smuggled by profit-seeking criminals.
Based on Trump’s election promise, the millions to be deported might be an easier target but they may carry some extremely valuable information about these networks which are harder to disrupt. They could be an asset if they can be a part of the deal to crack down on human smugglers and crack down on their financial accounts. This might not yield immediate headlines of people being removed but may prove to be a much better long-term strategy.
On the other side of the coin, there must be a way to make lives better for people where they are and migrant receiving countries should be as invested in that approach as in strengthening their own fences to keep them away. Policy makers cannot develop more effective strategies without understanding the economic, social, and humanitarian aspects of this problem and at some level a man like Trump has to admire the entrepreneur and risk-taking spirit of every human in search of a better life for themselves.
