Coyotes Raking in $7,000 Per Mexican Smuggled Across the Border

FAIR Take | July 2023
A new report released last week by the Government of Mexico and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) shows that Mexicans pay smugglers an average of $6,937 to take them into the United States. Mexican women pay approximately 19% more to be smuggled into the U.S. by coyotes, who charge them $7,839 on average, compared to the $6,565 average price paid by Mexican men.
The report was released by EMIF Norte, a joint initiative of the Mexican government, the College of the Northern Border and the International Organization for Migration, which has been collecting data on migrants since 1993. The information in this latest report was obtained through a survey of 20,000 migrants conducted between July and November of 2022. Almost 60% of those surveyed were men while just over 40% were women. Their average age was 30.
The survey showed that most migrants were heading towards the northern border despite their lack of connections or networks in the U.S. Only 8.6% had guaranteed work in the U.S. Only 11.9% had completed studies above high school level. Only one-third had relatives in the U.S.
The same organizations also did a survey of Guatemalan migrants. It found that over 15 percent of Guatemalans who migrated to the U.S. used smugglers, a dramatic increase from the 2 percent recorded in 2019. It also found that Guatemalans paid the smugglers $3,895 on average.
The increasing use of smugglers over the past two years has only fueled the growing strength of the drug cartels and the humanitarian crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border. This latest report provides more evidence that the open-borders policies of the Biden Administration are hurting America and migrants arriving here—not helping them.
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