Inside the Facebook profile of a migrant smuggler

Gus is one of those people who shares everything on his social network. He published what he ate and who he was with. He sent her love messages Morita and took them out cheek to his companions. He complained when he wanted to go to a concert, but he couldn’t afford it. He expressed faith in Santa Muerte. I posted Memes, motivational phrases and their professional achievements. I dreamed of having a lot of money.

“I am the family’s indebted sheep,” he wrote on his Facebook profile. “I know what should be and what shouldn’t be, that’s why they don’t influence me with anything,” he published after a day last September. “Heading for drag No Petro have reasonable”, he said about his work at the end of August. He did not like to hide: a Petro Migrant smugglers are known to cross the border between Mexico and Texas.

Networks were escape valves. El Gus liked to pose with border patrol caps, upload stories at checkpoints in Nuevo Laredo (Tamaulipas), put his vehicle. border patrol As a cover photo or to record videos of migrants walking in line through gaps, with life jackets, in the middle of the night. “They peel me,” he said proudly and confidently, with reggaeton music playing in the background. Reel which can still be seen on your profile.

The network was also a work tool. “Departing today at 3 and 5 o’clock in the cabin,” he announced on August 23, adding that there are seats available on trips he will be making across the border to other cities in the United States. Cabin is what they call it. Petros In cabins where bus drivers sleep, but sometimes they also put migrants in trailer boxes.

It didn’t take long for him to get clients. The message came at twelve o’clock in the afternoon Inbox From a person with people interested in the service. “How many?” Al Gus asked. “Three,” they replied. He Petro He told her that there was no problem, but she should give him her phone number to close the deal via WhatsApp.

A few minutes later, the client received the call. “I speak to you on behalf of Don Gus,” one of the men told him. Later it turns out that, in fact, it was Gus himself who called, but perhaps he wanted to protect himself or play important. They agreed over the phone. The interested party was to pay $450 when they arrived in Laredo (Texas) and $7,800 more when they reached their final destination. Gus didn’t know he was talking to a secret agent.

The agreement was that three undocumented migrants would be picked up in the parking lot of a seafood restaurant on one of Laredo’s main thoroughfares. a pickup A Ford Raptor was about to pass them. At the last minute the undercover agent canceled the deal. But they were already in their sights. They knew Al Gus was called Luis Daniel Segura.

The Ford Raptor left the seafood restaurant in the open, less than two kilometers away. Agents identified the driver as Bernardo Garza, who stopped to speak with two other men linked to the human trafficking network. From there he a Parking Along with several freight trucks, he parked next to a red tractor-trailer, opened the back door of the truck and let three migrants out, including a 15-year-old girl. The three were from Mexico and El Salvador and agreed to pay thousands of dollars for the service.

Police stopped Garza, who could not remove the weapon he was carrying in the Raptor, and arrested him. Less than a month later, they found Francisco Suarez aka Pancho, who acted as a hawk—a person who makes sure no one follows the traffickers—and told the drivers that there were safe houses where the migrants were being held. On September 16, Luis Daniel Segura fell, This Gus, in operation near the southern border of Texas. When they searched his phone, police connected all the dots: they found his Facebook profile, conversations with Pancho, and messages he sent to an undercover agent.

Segura confessed that he was recruited by the Northeast Cartel, a splinter of Los Zetas, to enter the business. In late October, the three were indicted by a grand jury on two counts of migrant smuggling, which carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. One of the migrants was willing to testify against him. There were also dozens and dozens of publications on social networks that could be evidence.

Against the ropes, the three decided to plead guilty to one charge last week. None of them are above 30 years of age. Garza is 26; Segura, 25, and Pancho, 19. The prosecutor’s office for the Southern District of Texas celebrated the guilty pleas as a victory, but also launched strong criticism of digital platforms for facilitating trafficking. “Cartels are increasingly using social media as part of their illegal business model,” said prosecutor Alamdar Hamdani. “Apps, like Facebook, allow these organizations to promote human smuggling services to a wider audience across the United States border,” he added.

Facebook did not respond to the complainant’s comments in its press room. “In an effort to end and prevent harm, we remove content that facilitates or coordinates human exploitation, including human trafficking,” reads the company’s policy on the matter, which was last updated on January 12. And content that promotes or offers services such as Northeast Cartel is expressly prohibited.

Dismantling migrant smuggling organizations was one of the priority topics at a ministerial meeting held by Mexican and US authorities in Washington last week. The US ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, reported on Monday that at least 10 criminal groups dedicated to the crime had been dismantled in recent months and “condemned for taking advantage of the needs, health and lives of migrants.”

“Among other places, these criminal organizations were operating in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Hidalgo, Veracruz, among others,” Salazar said. He also said that efforts to increase immigration controls on northbound bus and train routes “have allowed migration flows to fall by more than half from their peak in December.” Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena said security chief Rosa Isela Rodriguez and senior officials from the Republic’s attorney general’s office will meet with their American counterparts this month to strengthen mechanisms against trafficking networks.

This issue is resolved through politics. Immigration has become one of the most controversial issues in the United States elections, and politicians from the most conservative sectors have not hesitated to turn the immigration crisis into a political weapon to pressure the Joe Biden administration and immigration management of the government. of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

“The only thing we’re not doing is people coming across the border, because the Biden administration will accuse us of murder,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a January 5 radio interview. The remarks sparked a barrage of criticism against Abbott, who has espoused a strong anti-immigrant rhetoric and is embroiled in a legal battle with the federal government that reached the Supreme Court. The Texas governor’s policies to curb immigration range from knives and buoys to drowning those who try to swim in the Rio Grande and deploying armed guards at the border.

The paradox is that the adoption of heavy-handed policies and the collapse of legal channels for migration mean good news for criminal organizations, which have more potential clients, are more desperate to take unsafe routes and are willing to pay more and more money for their services. . At the same time Abbott put up the buoys of his floating wall, Al Gus uploaded photos on his social network next to the river “playing tag” or “a little race” with immigration agents, happy because there would be more work. He also published photos of the boys. From October 2022 to September 2023, the month its criminal cell was dismantled, more than 2.5 million migrants were arrested at the border, another record year for irregular crossings.

Subscribe here Go to the EL PAÍS Mexico newsletter and get all the main information on current events in this country