How young people are being recruited on social media to drive migrants beyond the border
Social media and messaging platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp and TikTok are increasingly being used to recruit Americans to help people cross into the U.S. illegally. It’s a gig economy, of sorts, with real consequences.
As part of our series “Barriers to Entry,” which looks at multiple forces — especially economic forces — shaping migration, “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio sat down with Craig Larrabee, special agent in charge at Homeland Security Investigations San Antonio to discuss the dangers of smuggling people as a side gig. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
David Brancaccio: I’m trying to understand this. It’s like an informal gig economy thing? People using social media are being offered money to provide what kind of illegal service?
Craig Larrabee: Well, there’s all kinds of things that happen, obviously, on social media. The one that we’re concerned about recently, really here is the use of social media to recruit young kids — high school age — to do human smuggling. Particularly, picking up migrants in different parts of the South Texas, and bringing them to other locations. What we’ve seen is that recruitment going through social media goes to a lot of our larger cities. Historically, the recruitment was local. Now, social media expands that ability to recruit.
Brancaccio: So a teenager could be on, say, TikTok, or Snapchat, and it’ll say ‘you want to make some easy money?’ or something?
Larrabee: Whatever particular social media there is, yes. Now they’re being recruited for quick money, come down here, pick up some folks drive them somewhere else and collect thousands of dollars. Now, the problem with that is they’re going into locations — particularly along our border — which are rural, which are ranches. They’re being told to evade law enforcement. So it’s a very, very dangerous situation.
Brancaccio: See, I was thinking you’re telling me something like they’re looking for truck drivers with commercial licenses and straight trucks with no windows. But this is just teenagers with a car.
Larrabee: Correct. Now, people once they’re smuggled across the river, they’re put in stash houses where they wait for a period of time, and then they’re usually or historically moved into tractor trailers. So that’s when you’re talking about the recruitment of the tractor trailer drivers. Now, those are CDL drivers who are going to drive the vehicles and try to bypass checkpoints in the tractor trailer. Obviously, one of the most dangerous situations we can have, particularly in South Texas with the heat here. Now, if we’re talking about Eagle Pass and Del Rio, those are usually smaller vehicles, maybe box trucks, but a lot of small cars. Normally, that should be three or four people in car, but trust me, they get a lot more in some of those cars, because they’ll pay per each migrant. So they want to maximize those profits.
Brancaccio: So, what are approaches — policy approaches — for dealing with this?
Larrabee: From an HSI, we’re the criminal investigators side of things, so we investigate organizations behind it, what we’ve seen is, you know, continue to do those investigations, try to take out the organizations at a larger scale. That’s our primary focus. But we’d be remiss if we’re not doing what we’re doing here today. And we actually have social media campaigns that we’re trying to push out to our local schools. We’re going to work towards driving schools, things like that, where we can get this information out. Because, again, teenagers think they’re invincible and think nothing’s ever going to happen to them. But time and time again, we can show them examples of when things do not go well.