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Twana
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One of Mexico’s most powerful criminal gangs has muscled into the migrant-smuggling racket, changing what had been a relatively benign if risky industry of independent operators into a centralized business that often has deadly consequences for those who try to operate outside it.
Smuggling routes into USA!
Los Zetas, who earned a reputation for brutality by gunning down thousands of Mexicans in the ongoing battle for drug-smuggling routes to the United States, now control much of the illicit trade of moving migrant workers toward the U.S. border, experts in the trade say.
They’ve brought logistical know-how, using tractor-trailer trucks to carry ever larger loads of people and charging higher prices, as much as $30,000 per head for migrants from Asia and Africa who seek to get to the United States.
They’ve also brought an unprecedented level of intimidation and violence to the trade. Los Zetas or their allies often kidnap and hold for ransom poor migrants who try to operate outside the system. If relatives don’t wire payment, the migrants sometimes are executed and dumped in mass graves or press-ganged into jobs with the criminal group.
Nearly a year ago, Zetas gunmen were implicated in the slaughter of 72 migrants at a ranch near San Fernando in Tamaulipas state, barely an hour and a half drive from Brownsville, Texas.
Other mass graves discovered in northern Mexico also may be the work of Los Zetas pushing to control smuggling to the United States.
Alejandro Solalinde, an activist Roman Catholic priest who runs a migrant shelter in the town of Ixtepec, in Mexico’s Oaxaca state, said Los Zetas had been merciless with migrants.
“Los Zetas control the trafficking of persons,” he said. “They are crueler and kill more easily. . . . They are voracious. They ask for more and more and more money.”
Even with an apparent drop in the numbers of migrants moving through Mexico, people smuggling is a huge business.
A U.N. report last year titled “The Globalization of Crime” estimated that Mexican smugglers rake in $6.6 billion annually from the 3 million Latin Americans who are taken across the southern U.S. border each year. Two weeks ago, Mexico’s National Institute of Migration said that 6 out of 10 migrants paid traffickers to help them cross the U.S. border, while 43 percent used them to traverse Mexico as well.
While such estimates routinely are disputed, officials acknowledge that drug gangs have found a new revenue source in human trafficking. Mercedes Gomez Mont, the top immigration official in Chiapas state, which borders Guatemala, cited criminal investigations by the Mexican Attorney General’s Office for her declaration that while “organized crime derives its greatest income from drug trafficking . . . in second place is human trafficking.”
The ascendancy of Los Zetas in migrant smuggling, formerly the preserve of relatively small independent operators known as “coyotes” who smuggled groups of 20 or fewer migrants north, has transformed the business.
Mexican officials report regularly finding tractor-trailer trucks loaded with as many as 250 migrants in their holds. The heavily armed drivers, who travel with escort vehicles, make payoffs at police and immigration checkpoints.
Two such tractor-trailers were detained at a checkpoint near the Chiapas state capital of Tuxtla Gutierrez. X-ray equipment revealed the ghostly outlines of human cargo, and when officials opened the holds they found 513 people from El Salvador, Ecuador, China, Japan, Guatemala, India, Nepal, Honduras and the Dominican Republic — a United Nations gathering of migrants.
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PFA, The recent beheadin's video~~Was just aired. Now the travel warnings have been lifted by Ms. Janet, so choose your travel carefully, Presidente vote very shortly in Mexico, do they let the dead vote..???> Only 90 this month... This has become unbelievable..!!
How timely...
I think they set all of the fires there to mask their trafficking.
Lets not forget that the Zeta's were trained by the US military to help Mexico fight the drug trade. But them something happened! OMG, the zetas then wanted more money and started working for the drug kingpins! WOW, who would have seen that coming! Now the border patrol is being taught to run and throw things at them instead of, God forbid, shooting them! Face it folks, this country is doomed due to progressives on both sides of the isle and any election, if there is going to be one, (which I doubt) will not be able to bring this country back! The marxists have won by the propagana they have been spewing for the last 30 at the kids in school, the stupid parents who just let it go on and the sheeple who let it happen , and the progressive azzholes that we elected who have sold this country out! McCain being one of them and just look, they re-elected this sell out even after they were warned! So if there is going to be an election, it won't matter! Romney is Hussain light and no different! Just look around, we have been sold out by every so called conservative and there's no end in sight! Seniors had better make sure you got a will because with the deathcare bill, you have been given the death sentence with no trial or (gasp, lawyer) "if you can find an honest one" and are slated for extermination! Hussain is changing the demographics of America to become hispanic and muslim. He is importing muslims from palestine by the 100's of thousands right under you very noses and no one is stopping him! OMG that would be profiling! God forbid that we do that! OOPS, I mean allah forbid! Since Hussain has basically outlawed God, that means we are stuck with allah now! Now he's allowed in the country, in fact, he's welcomed with open arms! Well I digress from the point I guess! But if you are expecting the borders to be enforced if Romney happens to get elected, DON'T! He's going to pick Rubio, and amnesty giver, and NOT a natural born citizen, therefore not elgible for potus, and you will never see the borders closed, ever! Yep, enjoy what little freedom you have left folks for it will all end in November!