Migrant Smuggling Data and Research

Zhang and Chin (2003) propose a different strategy to reconcile the different
perspectives on organized crime – grouping organized criminal activities into
two main categories: (a) territorial; and (b) non-territorial. Traditional organized
crimes, such as prostitution, drug distribution, loansharking, protection and
extortion, are mostly territorial where there are well-defined neighbourhoods.
A territorial criminal entity tends to be monopolistic and boundary-delimited.
Issues, such as legacy, identity and loyalty are of vital importance to these
criminal organizations. These criminal organizations also tend to be hierarchically
arranged, with a godfather sitting above layers of lieutenants and street soldiers.
Little empirical research is available to substantiate the involvement of
traditional organized crime in transnational migrant smuggling. No empirical
researchers have staked out any such claims that they found any evidence
to suggest the involvement of any traditional criminal organizations in the
transnational migrant smuggling businesses.
However, if one foregoes Finckenauer’s position and extends the
definition of organized crime, then there is ample empirical evidence to suggest
that human smugglers are collectively an organized criminal entity, albeit loose
affiliations of entrepreneurs who share little more than a desire to make money
through illicit means. In fact, the most successful migrant smugglers are nothing
but brokers who know where to acquire and deploy the necessary resources to
move clients through different way stations to their eventual destination. For
instance, after an eight-month investigation, an investigation by the Pittsburg
Tribune-Review found that most migrant smugglers along the United States–
Mexico borders were American citizens, doing the smuggling gig just for quick
cash. 118 After a review of court records, the investigators found that 92 per cent
of all convictions in the United States for migrant smuggling were tied to just the
southernmost counties of four States along the Mexico border. A total of 3,254
smugglers were convicted between 1 January 2013 and 31 December 2014.
Three of every five coyotes caught in the southern borderlands were US citizens
who smuggled immigrants in exchange for money, drugs or both. Americans
play key roles in the smuggling operations, especially driving unauthorized aliens
across vast distances and interfacing with other Americans. Their payment varies
tremendously depending on the type of services they provide, such as guiding
migrants around border checkpoints and transporting them to safehouses.
118
In a series of reports collectively titled “The American Coyotes,” investigator Carl Prine and photographer
Justin Merriman spent eight months traversing the United States–Mexican border regions, talking to
smugglers and migrants, and observing their business transactions. The full collection of the stories can be
found at http://triblive.com/americancoyotes/
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12. United States