It sounded like any other border chase. The driver of a Ford F-150 took off down a dirt road in southeastern Arizona to flee Border Patrol agents and finally ditched the truck in an orchard. Everyone ran off.
The surprise to agents who tracked down the driver and the migrants on June 9 was that Jose Alberto Lopez-Santiago, one of three Mexicans from the F-150, said he was being charged $80,000 to be smuggled into the U.S.
A day later, Border Patrol agents in southwestern Arizona chased down a Toyota Sienna packed with 12 people, who turned out to be illegal immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala. One of them, Maria Juarez-Lopez, told agents that she paid $50,000 to a coordinator in Agua Prieta, Mexico, to be smuggled to San Diego.
Last week, agents working near Sonoita, in the middle of Arizona’s border with Mexico, pulled two illegal immigrants from the trunk of a Chevrolet Malibu in 100-degree heat. One of the migrants, from Guatemala, said he had paid 50,000 quetzals and owed 725,000 more once he arrived in Mississippi. That works out to nearly $100,000 in U.S. currency.
Those used to be the rates for migrants from far-flung places such as China or Vietnam. Now, they are the costs of smuggling from America’s backyard.
Prices have increased in the weeks since President Biden announced his border reset on June 4, according to The Washington Times’ database of border smuggling cases.
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Before the announcement, Mexican migrants caught as they were being smuggled deeper into the U.S. were paying an average of about $9,400. Those from Central America’s Northern Triangle were spending about $13,900.
Mexican smuggling costs now average $10,100. Those from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala say they expect to pay about $14,800.
“It’s a business,” said Emilio Gonzalez, who ran U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Bush administration. “The Biden border crisis is a business, and everybody makes money except the U.S. taxpayer. It’s a human trafficking business, and the Biden administration is the biggest supporter of this human trafficking business.”
The data comes from court documents filed by Customs and Border Protection or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities in prosecutions against smugglers. Agents and officers investigating cases often persuade migrants to reveal how much they have been charged and then report that data to the courts as evidence justifying the smuggling arrests and detention of the migrants as material witnesses.
The $80,000 and $100,000 costs are so high that some experts question whether the figures are real. They speculate that migrants might be lying to the agents.
Something has changed. The Times database includes seven years of data dating back to the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy. In that time, the rates migrants say they are charged have never been so varied.
Experts told The Times that cartels charge whatever they think migrants will pay.
“My theory is that those smuggled/material witnesses that pay so much are probably of means,” Ronald Vitiello, a former chief of the Border Patrol, said in an email. “Like a kidnap victim in Mexico is ransomed for a lot more if they own a business/property.”
He said others may be expected to pay off their debts by working within the cartel’s operations.
Among the smuggling cases filed with courts in recent weeks:
• A June 14 arrest at a highway checkpoint near Falfurrias, Texas, where a canine trained to sniff out people or drugs alerted to a Dodge pickup.
Agents found two illegal immigrants stuffed inside the rear passenger seat with their heads sticking through holes cut in the upholstery, concealed by a pile of trash and clothing. The man accused in that incident had been arrested by Texas authorities on smuggling charges a month earlier. He told Border Patrol agents he was to be paid $1,000 per person.
• A truck was stopped on June 11 at the Falfurrias checkpoint when agents thought the driver’s responses were too quick. They found 42 illegal immigrants tucked among rotting produce in the refrigerated trailer.
The migrants were from Ecuador, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico. A Homeland Security Investigations agent said one of the truck drivers, who had been arrested in April in another smuggling case, said the pay to run the migrants from the border to Houston was $20,000.
• A June 17 arrest of a Nicaraguan man who agents said was nabbed while waiting to pick up illegal immigrants. The man was in the U.S. on “parole,” one of millions of illegal immigrants caught and released by the Biden administration. He said he started smuggling after seeing an ad on TikTok offering big money to transport migrants, and he was offered $4,000 for this run.
Over the past year, TikTok and Instagram have joined Facebook and Craigslist as popular advertising spots for recruiting smugglers.
Drivers can earn a few hundred dollars to shuttle migrants locally at the border or $1,000 per person for longer runs to major cities such as Houston, Phoenix or Los Angeles.
Drivers aren’t the only ones paid.
Stash house operators, foot guides and coordinators take their cuts — as do the cartels.
Border Patrol agents in Arizona often report to the courts the smuggling fees migrants pay plus the additional “mafia fee” or “piso,” which nearly every migrant pays to smuggling cartels for use of their routes into the U.S.
A standard mafia fee in recent weeks has been 25,000 pesos, or about $1,350.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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