Smuggling of migrants from the Northern Triangle to the United States

All migrants want to improve their lives. Not all of them can fulfill the administrative requirements to migrate legally to the United States, so some of them decide to breach the law and become “irregular migrants”. There are essentially two ways of doing this. For those Central Americans who can afford the airfare and are able to get a visa, either with or without the assistance of an agent, the simplest way is to fly in and overstay the visa. For those unable to secure visas, there is the tried and true route of travelling the length of Mexico and crossing the border clandestinely. Illegally crossing the United States land border is quite difficult, and most of the irregular migrants employ smugglers. And it is this latter flow of people - the migrants smuggled through Mexico to the United States – that is the subject of this chapter.

Related Subject(s): Drugs Crime and Terrorism

Countries: United States