Expert: South Texas Becoming Lucrative Point for Human Smuggling
Expert: South Texas Becoming Lucrative Point for Human Smuggling
Posted: Apr 24, 2012 5:42 PM
Updated: Apr 24, 2012 6:19 PM
HAVANA - A group of illegal immigrants were caught in Havana yesterday. At least 20 of them were found in an abandoned building.
"They were just running and running, and immigration arrested them," said one neighbor.
Four hundred people live in Havana. The Rio Grande runs through it. In 2010, Border Patrol agents caught several undocumented people forced to move drugs for the cartels in the town in 2010.
But a neighbor told us smuggling in the area had dropped, since the floods a few years ago.
"This is the first time they came inside my property," said the neighbor.
"If the word gets around it's easier and there are established smuggling routes in South Texas, they'll go that route," said Phil Jordan, a former Drug Enforcement Administration supervisor and a cartel expert.
He told us human smuggling numbers are down in West Texas.
"What appears to be happening is that South Texas has become a lucrative point for human smuggling," he explained.
According to Jordan, the cartels charge between $3,000 and $5,000 to smuggle a person. A cartel driver gets $1,000 for every kilo of marijuana.
In the last three months, there have been large groups of illegal immigrants detained in the Rio Grande Valley. Jordan said U.S. and Mexican law enforcement are making it tougher to smuggle drugs. The Mexican military seized 30 tons of drugs in the last four months.
He says the cartels can get people across easier than drugs right now.
Border Patrol agents said they also caught a group of 20 illegal immigrants less than a half mile from Chimney Park in Mission this afternoon. The group was made up of people from Mexico and Central America.
People living in that area said they hadn't seen illegal immigrants there in quite a long time.
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