Migrant Smuggling Data and Research

journalistic reports suggest many of them travel to Brazil or Ecuador where they
can benefit from visa systems that grant them visas upon arrival, which are then
used to fly or trek across Central America, where they often file asylum claims
(Fox, 2016; CEAM, 2010; UNHCR, 2010). Many of these journeys reportedly take
place with the assistance of smuggling facilitators or a vast network of brokers
who, as documented in other regions, provide travel assistance (Alpes, 2013).
While travel patterns are known to change rapidly and in response to
immigration enforcement measures, indicators of criminal activity, social unrest
or the availability of shelters or migrant reception centres, it is also possible
to identify some core routes and means of transportation favoured by those
in transit. While migrants may also travel by sea or air, the most documented
transits have been those occurring by land. The flows most often discussed in
the literature are those occurring from south to north, involving the journeys
of Central American migrants who enter Mexico on foot through that country’s
southern border, in the states of Chiapas and Tabasco (Guevara, 2015; Álvarez
Velasco, 2015). Migrants from the Caribbean (Cuba) and Asia also opt to cross
into Mexico through Belize (Casillas, 2007). Once in Mexico, migrants with the
least amount of social and economic capital often rely on the travel infrastructure
created by the presence of the Mexican railroad system. Known as La Bestia, the
Mexican cargo train system connects the country’s southern border with cities
on the United States–Mexico border and provides a basic, if highly precarious,
way to travel. Images of migrants riding atop of the train as stowaways have
become iconic representations of migration flows in Latin America, the journey
into Mexico often described as an often dangerous proposition, migrants
travelling across regions under the control of criminal organizations and through
security checkpoints, where State and non-State actors are known to engage in
predatory practices, ranging from demands for bribes to mass kidnapping and
extortion against those in transit (CNDH, 2009 and 2011; Casillas, 2010a).
The experience of Central American migrants travelling through Mexico
constitutes the most often discussed process in the topic of Latin American
migration at the moment, in part as a response to the dramatic reduction in the
number of Mexican migrants travelling irregularly to the United States (Passel,
Cohn and González-Barrera, 2014), but also given its volume and its visibility in
the context of the security crises connected to gang and drug-trafficking related
violence afflicting Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras (Ribando Seelke, 2014;
Wolf, 2012). While there are no specific numbers pertaining to smuggled Central
American migrants who travel through Mexico, data collected by the Mexican
authorities provide a window into the dynamics of their migration. In the period
comprised between January and September of 2015, a total of 118,000 Central
Americans were removed from Mexico, which represented an increase of almost
40,000 migrants from the prior year, when 80,736 deportations involving Central
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11. Latin America