Chapter 4 People-smuggling through Mexico and the role of organised crime and corruption
This chapter examines the evolution of organised crime’s role in the facilitation of migration journeys in the region, looking at how people-smuggling developed at the start of the twenty-first century from what was chiefly community-based coyotaje1 into a substantial criminal industry. The development of the threat from organised crime groups into a structural factor during transit migration in Mexico led to major changes in the dynamics of people-smuggling in the region. The shift towards territorial control as a revenue-generating model for large organised crime groups changed the nature of people-smuggling operations in the region, forcing people-smugglers to pay to pass through territory under control of criminal organisations with extreme violence against those who did not pay – essentially a protection racket. This chapter shows how the dynamics of people-smuggling in the region changed as a result of increased migration controls and analyses the evolving role of organised crime in facilitating migrant journeys and the implications of this for the state.
Morphogenetic analysis demonstrates how the nature and operations of people-smugglers respond agilely to the imposition of migration controls, and how this has strengthened organised crime’s involvement while, parallel to this, corruption and collusion weaken state integrity. It also shows how migrant agency was constrained after the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur (the Southern Border Plan), drawing on fieldwork interviews to understand some of the challenges that began to affect migrants’ travelling choices. In doing so, my analysis reveals the transforming properties of agency by demonstrating how migrant agency led to structural elaboration – specifically the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur – and how migrants and people-smuggling operations subsequently reacted.
The findings are then considered in relation to Kyle and Dale’s (2011) argument that policy delivered prior to 2001 was deliberately intended to move people-smuggling in the region away from small-scale operations towards “institutional human smuggling” controlled by criminal syndicates (Kyle and Dale 2011: 35), examining the extent to which the consequences of subsequent policy were likely foreseeable and the implications of increased corruption related to people-smuggling. Lastly, it connects with the broader debate on the adverse consequences of migration control on people-smuggling, extending this by arguing that migration policy externalised from the destination state can have consequences that are detrimental to the transit state, when implemented in the context of extant people-smuggling and related corruption.
Conceptualising people-smuggling
Contemporary understanding of people-smuggling has progressed past previous conceptualisations that, while providing valuable insight into the business models of people-smuggling operations, had an overwhelmingly structural focus (for example, Salt and Stein 1997). This had presented some conceptual limitations, by explaining “the scope and nature of smuggling within typical narratives of gangs, mafias and ethnic syndicates, or defining smugglers’ actions along narratives of victimisation, sexual violence or financial exploitation” (Sanchez 2015: 31). Similarly unhelpful are the typical official narratives and media rhetoric that position people-smugglers as criminals who operate in a highly organised manner under a central command, and who are increasingly transnational in nature and invariably exploit their clients. Such narratives are problematic because they do not allow for evaluation of migrant agency or for the evolution of operations in response to increased migration controls or emerging displacement crises. They also fail to address the roles of states and policy in creating and perpetuating people-smuggling (Kyle and Dale 2011, Sanchez 2015).
Agency plays a critical role in people-smuggling and in navigating the “series of complicated, interconnected circumstances” (Sanchez 2015: 26) that drive migration and shape decisions, based on careful consideration of all available options and resources (Van Liempt and Doomernik 2006, Spener 2011, Sanchez 2009, 2015). People with potential international protection needs also adopt similar decision-making with regard to the use of people-smugglers before deciding to flee their country (Robinson and Segrott 2002). The smuggling of minors is more complex, exposing tensions between protection and security and raising questions about minors’ capacity to consent and, therefore, whether they are demonstrating agency (Baird 2013). Although commentators have noted the collaborative nature of people-smuggling and the dynamic, symbiotic relationship between migrants and people-smugglers, they caution that the imbalances of power between them have the potential to lead to abuse during transit (Van Liempt and Doomernik 2006, Sanchez 2015). In this respect, a migrant-centric approach also fails to bring genuine understanding to the broader dynamics of people-smuggling entities and operations.
Restrictive immigration policies, together with the inability of states to seal their borders completely, result in “an enormous illicit market for organised criminals to exploit” (Moses 2006: 163). It follows that irregular migration is intrinsically connected to increases in people-smuggling. The migration industry that develops as “an inevitable aspect and an extension of the social networks and transactional linkages which are part of the migratory process” (Castles et al. 2014: 235) can lead to exploitative practices, including the rise of criminal organisations dedicated to smuggling and trafficking migrants (Wickramasekara 2009, Castles et al. 2014). People-smuggling can also further aggravate the efficacy gap in policy, where objectives are not met because people-smugglers are able to facilitate unauthorised border crossings. Typically, academic discussion about why gaps occur tends to be at macro level, rather than looking in detail at the impact of migrant agency on policy effectiveness and efficacy gaps, although commentators (for example, Castles 2004, 2010) note that this is an issue – indeed, the continued exercise of agency in spite of deterrent policy denotes its failure. This is particularly pertinent in the case of forced migration, where agency must be exercised despite attempts to curb it through migration controls and policy.
Some analyses have focused on the unintended consequences of migration control on people-smuggling (Van Liempt and Doomernik 2006, Andreas 2011, Kyle and Dale 2011, Doomernik 2013). Commentators note that “state interventions are likely to have considerable impact on the actions of human smugglers; as a result, they may reorganise their routes and destinations, and the economics of smuggling too are likely to be affected” (Van Liempt and Doomernik 2006: 185). As well as having “devastating humanitarian consequences” in terms of increased structural violence and deaths of transit migrants, restrictive controls at the US–Mexico border also had “a significant, if often neglected consequence: they ultimately fuelled the development of the local human smuggling market” (Sanchez 2015: 41). Indeed, it is clear that “politics, not just economics and criminality, creates professional human smugglers on the scale we are witnessing today … [reflecting the] multiple ways in which States make smuggling and smuggling (re)makes States” (Kyle and Koslowski 2011: 16–17).
Kyle and Dale (2011) further develop this strand of the debate, arguing that mid-1990s border policies – far from having the type of unintended consequences outlined by Andreas (2001, 2011) – were planned and implemented to deliberately change small-scale people-smuggling into an industry controlled by organised crime. The reasoning behind this is that law enforcement is better equipped to tackle a few large organisations than numerous individuals and small groups. Their research showed that US government representatives not only agreed that there was a “positive correlation between the United States’ enforcement actions along the border and the recent increase in the scope and profitability of professional smuggling … but hint[ed] that this was the plan all along” (Kyle and Dale 2011: 34). Their further reasoning for state complicity in driving this change touches on deeper economic and political complexities and includes its usefulness in political rhetoric. For instance, discourse on the victimhood of smuggled people is a useful tool in rhetoric, as this one-dimensional presentation of migrants draws away from their agency and human qualities.
Commentators have highlighted the need for a more multidisciplinary and coherent approach that is able to capture the responsive nature of both structure and agency (Baird 2013, Sanchez 2015). My analysis here addresses this by examining change and developments from the dual perspectives of both agency and structure. It also feeds into the debate on people-smuggling as an ‘unintended consequence’ of migration control (for example, Cornelius et al. 2004, Czaika and De Haas 2013, 2016, Schmoll 2016), although it frames these more objectively as ‘adverse consequences’. It advances the emerging strands of this debate that argue that such consequences may be to some degree intentional or anticipated (Andreas 2011, Kyle and Dale 2011, Kyle and Koslowski 2011, Doomernik 2013, Sanchez 2015), by demonstrating that the consequences of recent migration policy within the contemporaneous environment of systemic corruption would have likely been foreseeable, and the policy implemented with awareness of this.
While there is acknowledgement that the nature of people-smuggling has evolved in response to specific regional dynamics, there appears to be scant analysis of how it has developed from a structure–agency perspective. Morphogenetic analysis is a particularly useful tool for understanding the dynamics of people-smuggling on a global as well as regional level. Whereas large-scale mobility caused by criminal violence and the threat from organised crime during transit are aspects of organised crime’s involvement in migration that are quite specific to the region, organised crime’s involvement in people-smuggling has broader global relevance, both in terms of transcontinental people-smuggling and of the potential for comparative regional analysis.
People-smuggling and state integrity
The increasing links between organised crime and people-smuggling on a global as well as regional level pose a great threat to state integrity (Pickering 2011). Indeed, the Mexican government considered migration as one of the nation’s biggest security risks because of uncontrolled flows and the porosity of the southern border, as well as corruption and infiltration by organised crime (Flores 2016). However, the negative impact on state integrity goes beyond the compromising of state sovereignty when borders are crossed in an irregular manner. Organised crime requires, at minimum, state complicity in order to operate successfully, and this complicity – from omission to collusion to corruption – has a subsequent impact on the rule of law and, thus, the potential to compromise the human rights situation of people within the state.
While people-smuggling may not necessarily violate people’s rights directly, it can lead to a broader situation of insufficient or ineffective state protection and authority. As criminal groups take increasing control of and profits from people-smuggling, there is a strengthening of organised crime and, at the same time, a weakening of state integrity. This weakening is not entirely parallel, however: while state authorities may be corrupted by or collude with organised crime actors in the facilitation of people-smuggling, they also act distinctly and independently of organised crime, accepting payments to allow passage. Challenges to state integrity thus derive in a direct manner from the participation of corrupt authorities in people-smuggling, and in an indirect manner from their complicity with organised crime.
Given time and a lack of appropriate response by authorities, this corruption becomes “institutionalised and sustained” (Sandoval 2013: 217). Furthermore, such levels of corruption then become socially accepted within communities in migrants’ countries of origin “because they make it possible to avoid legal restrictions that would otherwise limit the mobility of migrants” (Sandoval 2013: 221). People-smuggling is not just a straightforward violation of state rules through enabling extra-legal border crossings, but requires corruption and complicity that undermines both state integrity and trust in the authorities. Thus, it damages the state through corruption, and this damage is further multiplied and sustained by impunity for this corruption.
People-smuggling and organised crime in Mexico and Central America
People-smuggling in the region is not a new phenomenon, but between 2001 and 2016 it underwent a complete transformation in terms of operations and control. Coyotaje has historically had a particular social role in the region, but between this period, operations moved away from this traditional form of people-smuggling to become a large industry controlled by organised crime (Andreas 2011, Casillas 2011). At the same time, more restrictive US migration controls from 2001 led to a greater reliance by migrants on people-smugglers to undertake the migration journey, and increased costs to the migrants. This change has been framed as the ‘unintended consequence’ of migration controls, because such controls make migrants more likely to use people-smugglers (Cornelius et al. 2004, Andreas 2011). Kyle and Dale (2011), however, argue that this consolidation of people-smuggling services was a deliberate aim of the migration policy. By 2010, an estimated 90% of people crossing the US–Mexico border in an unauthorised manner were engaging the services of people-smugglers for some part of their journey, and the industry in Mexico was estimated to be worth approximately US $6.6billion (UNODC 2010).
New dynamics emerged as traditional coyotaje, or individual people-smugglers, were displaced by large operating networks that were increasingly controlled by organised criminal groups, and people were compelled to use people-smugglers to avoid the threat of organised crime during transit. The fragmentation of organised crime groups in Mexico after 2006 resulted in these groups diversifying their criminal portfolios and adopting operating models of territorial control, thus becoming a structural force in the transit portion of migration journeys through Mexico. This development, in turn, constrained migrant agency, with people then forced to use increasingly expensive people-smuggling services to evade the systematic threat of violence posed by organised crime during transit, as well as to avoid state agents and cross borders in an irregular manner.
In addition to their previous reasons for using people-smugglers – namely to avoid state actors or to navigate isolated border areas – migrants began using these services to evade the threat of organised crime. This resulted in people-smuggling in the region no longer being just a service for those with no legal migration route but becoming an organised crime protection racket (Brigden 2015, 2016, Frank-Vitale 2023). Further, as the demographic profile of people fleeing Central America changed (see Chapter 1), so too did the demand for people-smuggling services for vulnerable people, such as women and children. However, agency is also transforming and can lead to structural elaboration in the form of increased migration controls in response to people arriving after travelling with people-smugglers, which can, in turn, result in a greater reliance on people-smuggling services because of these controls.
People-smuggling in the region: its role and evolution 2000–15
For decades, people-smugglers – known regionally as polleros, coyotes and guías – have been firmly established within the social fabric of migrant-sending communities in the region (Andreas 2011, Pickering 2011, Kyle and Koslowski 2011, Izcara Palacios 2014, Sanchez 2015).2 People-smugglers were service providers for communities with high levels of out-migration and a lack of legitimate travel options, and they held a reputation that depended on trust. People historically engaged these small, independent operators to guide them across the US border and help them to avoid border controls and state agents.
Traditional coyotaje has been largely displaced by criminal organisations that have extended their activities to people-smuggling. Formerly acting as individual agents and service providers, frontline people-smugglers became increasingly influenced and controlled by organised criminal groups and were obliged to operate in larger networks with higher costs (Andreas 2011, Casillas 2011, Spener 2011, González 2013). The underlying factors in this shift were the post-2001 tightening of US border control, the fragmentation of large organised crime groups from 2006, and the remaining and emerging groups’ focus on a strategy of territorial control (Andreas 2011, Casillas 2011, Slack and Whiteford 2013, Riesenfeld 2015, Brigden 2016). As a result, rather than using people-smugglers solely to evade border control, Central Americans now needed to use these services to navigate this criminal landscape, engaging people-smugglers for their knowledge about which actors to pay to cross Mexico successfully (Casillas 2011, Brigden 2016).
Women, children, elderly people and family groups are more likely than others to rely on people-smuggling services (López Castro 1998, Albaladejo 2016). Typically, people purchase people-smuggling packages that, dependent on cost, may include transport, accommodation, food and door-to-door delivery, as well as between three and six attempts at reaching the USA. People would usually pay half the costs prior to departure and half on successful arrival at their destination, often relying on family or friends in the USA to finance the journey. Modern operators make use of technology such as mobile phones to facilitate journeys, enabling them to coordinate the stages of the passage remotely (Stargardter and Zengerle 2014). In recent years, people-smuggling operations have become increasingly sophisticated, with operators issuing colour-coded wristbands to indicate the smuggling group involved and the level of services that people have purchased as they travel through Mexico and cross the border. This sophistication indicates high levels of management, efficiency and tracking processes.
Criminal actors involved in people-smuggling
There are three key actors in the criminal landscape that people-smugglers must navigate in order to operate: street gangs, large criminal organisations and corrupt state officials (Dudley 2011, 2012, 2016a, UNODC 2012, Brigden 2016). From 2006, several of Mexico’s large organised crime groups became involved with people-smuggling in diverse ways, notably: charging dues known as piso for migrants to pass through the areas over which they have territorial control; direct involvement in people-smuggling operations; and displacing people-smugglers to take over their businesses (Casillas 2011, Dudley 2012, Beittel 2015).
The territorial business model of these criminal organisations in Mexico (commonly known as cartels) means they must control all criminal activity and illicit goods in their territory or authorise and receive financial benefit from these. As a result, people-smugglers must pay dues to pass safely through each organised crime group’s territorial areas of control. If they don’t pay, the organised crime groups will kidnap or kill their ‘cargo’: “The message was clear: if they didn’t pay for the passage of the merchandise, there was no merchandise, that’s to say, no business” (Casillas 2011: 151). In disputed areas, people-smugglers must confirm who currently controls the area and so pay piso to the appropriate criminal group. This is a difficult task in areas where large criminal groups battle for control, as territorial control can shift rapidly. A people-smuggler who fails to pay the correct dues to the correct controlling group puts at risk the liberty or lives of the migrants they are transporting (Dudley 2011, 2012). Some of the large organised crime groups are more business-like in their approach and collect fees using the omnipresent threat of violence. Others are more predatory and willing to use violence for enforcement, punishment and contingent reasons (see Chapter 3). The involvement of street gangs (often Central American maras) varies across Mexico, although they appeared to be controlled by the large criminal groups. The groups contract their services as informants and enforcers in a protection–extortion racket, and the maras then forcibly collect or extort piso from those travelling without people-smugglers, often on top of trains.
State agents are also heavily involved in enabling the illicit movement of people, whether through coercion, corruption or collusion. People-smuggling often requires corruption of public officials in order to succeed, producing both passive and active forms of corruption as “transactions and extortions” (Sandoval 2013: 221). It varies as to whether the involvement of state agents is voluntary or involuntary. Experts I interviewed said that it is difficult to ascertain whether agents of state institutions in Mexico, such as the police, are acting autonomously or whether they have been so contaminated by organised crime that they have no independent authority over their actions. Certainly, as well as corrupt state officials receiving bribes independently, there is a great deal of collusion between corrupt authorities (including immigration agents and the now-defunct Federal Police), large criminal groups, maras and local gangs.
Just as there has been some difference of opinion about the involvement of organised crime in people-smuggling on a global level (see Baird 2013), there was some debate about the extent of organised crime’s involvement in the operational side of people-smuggling in the region. This is because there appear to have been different models operating concurrently, all with varying degrees of direct involvement of organised crime groups, although these people-smuggling models are generally defined by hierarchical structure and territorial control. This manifested as a network of transporters, with high-level organised crime authorising or directing front-end activity according to the involvement of the specific group. Within this hierarchy, there are many different actors providing a variety of services. With a layer of front-end contacts to recruit, transport and accommodate migrants and an invisible layer that handles organisation and finances, the front-end smugglers may not even know who they are ultimately working for (Casillas 2011, 2016a, 2016b). The most sophisticated people-smuggling networks have become even more hierarchical, with a top layer of leadership that has developed business relationships with transcontinental networks (Barrón et al. 2014). The use of mobile technology to coordinate people-smuggling remotely provides layers of protection to the senior levels of the operation against identification and apprehension, while leaving the front-end transporters vulnerable to law enforcement. This poses significant challenges to any efforts by law enforcement to disrupt people-smuggling operations in a meaningful manner.
Some commentators (for instance, Izcara Palacios 2014, 2022, Sanchez 2015, Hiemstra 2019) claim that organised crime groups were not involved in facilitating migrant journeys in this region prior to 2015, but were only financially involved with people-smuggling. This took the form of charging piso to the people-smugglers to pass through their territory and kidnapping and extorting groups of migrants, sometimes contracting out this enforcement work to other criminal actors. Their rationale for this is two-fold. Firstly, people-smuggling does not offer immediate profits without some investment, whereas people-smugglers can be charged dues for passing through ‘territories’ without any such investment. Secondly, migrants engage people-smugglers based on trust, which organised crime groups cannot offer (Kyle and Koslowski 2011, Izcara Palacios 2014). Researchers argued that organised crime groups did not engage in the facilitation of migrant journeys because collecting piso from migrants in transit yields immediate revenue, without requiring a significant investment of time and effort, and “what interests them is making a profit from ransom payments, not providing a service to migrants” (Izcara Palacios 2014: 335).
In contrast, other studies, along with experts I interviewed, indicated that there were varied operational models and claimed that some organised criminal groups in Mexico were providing people-smuggling as part of their portfolio of activities, with certain groups finding it a more important revenue source than drug trafficking. State intelligence agencies reported that in addition to charging piso, the Sinaloa Cartel actively controlled people-smugglers in northwest Mexico. While just three or four cells were operating most of the people-smuggling in this region, investigators found more direct control and even participation by the Sinaloa Cartel. This was particularly so in transcontinental people-smuggling, with the Sinaloa Cartel and the Chinese mafia working together, and similar links with associates in Brazil (Slack and Whiteford 2013, Zeta 2015). Indeed, the large increases in the volume of migrants arriving in Mexico from Asia and Africa in the mid-2010s indicated that such transcontinental people-smuggling was becoming a significant growth area (Sanchez 2016).
What is clear is that both front-end people-smugglers and organised criminal groups financially benefited from people-smuggling, but that their roles were quite distinct at operational level; as previously stated, the primary role of organised crime groups in the facilitation of migration has been territorial control and the violently enforced collection of dues. Just as the criminal landscape in Mexico is subject to constant flux, so too is it likely that business models and involvement are constantly revised and improved upon. Criminal groups are dynamic and are able to respond quickly and opportunistically to changes in the environment, and people-smugglers are generally flexible and willing to work with different groups in order to maintain the movement of their clients (Castillo and Sherman 2014).
It has been well documented that people-smuggling can develop into situations of human-trafficking, adversely affecting human rights. There are four key links between people-smuggling and trafficking in Mexico, aggravated by the involvement of large criminal groups. Firstly, when migrants are kidnapped by organised crime groups during transit, those without funds to secure their release may be sold into modern forms of slavery or forced to work for the criminal groups (Casillas 2011, Le Goff and Weiss 2011, Zamora 2011). Secondly, some people-smugglers working in the region have sold their ‘charges’ to organised criminal groups who then force them into modern slavery, although it is not clear if these are isolated incidents (Dudley 2012). Thirdly, traffickers posing as people-smugglers recruit people in their hometowns or in border areas using lies and manipulation, taking advantage of their vulnerability and irregular status (Le Goff and Weiss 2011). Lastly, these movements of people are often conducted by the same operators, meaning that it is “difficult to disentangle the processes of human smuggling from those of human trafficking because these processes are generally handled by networks of intermediaries rather than end to end by the same individual or organisation” (Kyle and Koslowski 2011: 5). While acknowledging the blurred lines between these activities in the region, some commentators caution that uncritically conflating them serves states’ purposes and obscures their own role in creating and perpetuating people-smuggling. Conversely, states may “appropriate images and narratives of trafficking victims, as well as of smuggling villains, to justify stricter migration controls” (Brigden 2016).
By 2015, migrants’ reasons for using people-smugglers had changed, and people-smugglers were increasingly being used as paid-for-protection from organised crime during transit, as well as to avoid detection by state agents (Izcara Palacios 2022, Hiemstra 2019). Brigden’s research found that, for Salvadorans, “the primary purpose of hiring a door-to-door coyote is not to evade border patrols, but to evade criminal violence” (Brigden 2015). It appears to be a unique feature of the situation in Mexico that individuals and people-smugglers must buy protection from the organised crime groups that exert territorial control across the country. If the correct dues are not paid, ‘enforcement’ is provided by other criminal actors – such as the maras or elements of the then-powerful Zetas franchise. Those who travel without a people-smuggler would be systematically targeted and run the highest risk from organised crime, including kidnap, extortion, extreme violence, human trafficking and forced involvement in the organised crime groups’ illegal activities. Migrants whose smuggler failed to pay piso to the correct group would also face these risks (Sørensen 2013, Brigden 2015, Riesenfeld 2015, International Crisis Group 2016). Hence, people-smuggling in the region became not just a service for those with no legal migration route, but an organised crime protection racket.
The impact of Plan Frontera Sur (2014–16)
Following the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur, as well as using people-smugglers to protect against the threat of organised crime during transit, people were also compelled to use people-smugglers to protect themselves from the increased in-country migration controls and to access transport options, having been unable to travel on public transport because of such controls. People-smuggling services were used proportionally more often by vulnerable demographic groups such as women and children who were now fleeing Northern Central America in large numbers. The cost to the service users went up and, according to experts I interviewed in Mexico and El Salvador, basic packages from El Salvador to the USA in 2015 started from US$8000 and could be US$14,000 or more for unaccompanied minors. These high prices resulted from the imposition of higher payments for piso as well as increased payments to corrupt state agents to allow the migrants’ passage.
Experts from academia, international organisations and the independent press who I interviewed during my 2015 fieldwork were adamant that corruption was spreading as a direct result of the changed situation following the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur and that it now involved more state actors, including higher-level officials as well as the frontline agents on the route who physically permit the passage of people-smugglers. Indeed, contemporaneous trends indicated the increasing involvement of state agents, with large groups of migrants traversing Mexico in buses and lorries, avoiding apprehension in the northern parts of the country, despite their visibility throughout the journey. This involvement ranged from taking bribes to allow passage to more complex relationships between state agents and organised criminal groups (Hiemstra 2019), with corrupt state actors acting independently and colluding at a high level with organised crime.
Data from my expert interviews and media reports at the time indicated that, following the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur, organised crime became increasingly involved in the facilitation of migrant journeys. There was a marked change in the use of routes and modes of transport and the extent to which organised crime groups were involved in facilitating these. Maritime routes on both the east and west coasts were being used, and large groups of people were being transported overland in lorries, with organised crime groups increasingly involved in arranging these journeys.3 The situation of in-country migration controls made people more likely to use people-smugglers, and the large flows of migrants out of Northern Central America and the changed demographic profile of people moving made people-smuggling particularly lucrative (Hiemstra 2019). Hence, Plan Frontera Sur made people more likely to use people-smugglers and increased the costs for these services, and it also led to the increased profitability of people-smuggling, a deeper involvement of organised crime and the increased corruption of state officials.
Transcontinental links
People-smuggling and transit migration in the region has become more international in nature, with the arrival in Mexico of increasing numbers of transcontinental migrants intending to enter the USA. Research indicated that migrants arriving in Mexico used indirect and convoluted routes from other continents, and that many engaged people-smugglers for all or part of their journey (UNODC 2012).4 Previously, migrants tended to be smuggled according to their regional or national origin, and people-smuggling networks for the different regional groups did not work together. However, since the end of 2008, international people-smuggling rings have begun working together with regional networks to facilitate transcontinental movements of people (Meléndez 2015, Casillas 2016a).
Developments during late 2015 and throughout 2016 indicated that these links were strengthening. During this time, tens of thousands of extra-continental migrants (primarily from Haiti, Cuba and certain African and Asian countries) arrived in southern Mexico, with thousands more stranded in Colombia and Central America.5 Many of the Africans and Asians who arrived reported using people-smugglers whose services they had engaged both prior to leaving their country and during transit in South America, paying more than US$10,000 for transport and fake passports in 2016. This situation led to the closing of borders between Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia in mid-2016. Meeting these stranded migrants’ needs placed increased pressure on both civil society groups and migration authorities in these countries and in Mexico, particularly in Tapachula and Tijuana. These transnational dynamics continued to increase and persisted to the start of 2025 and US policy changes under the second Trump administration (see Conclusions and Reflections chapter).
A pattern emerged of people arriving in Mexico in large numbers and without travel documents from countries that do not have a deportation agreement with Mexico. For instance, from late 2015 through 2016 thousands of Cubans, Haitians and citizens of certain African countries presented themselves at INM asking for salvoconductos or ‘exit permits’. This salvoconducto is a temporary travel document that is available to citizens of countries without consulates or embassies in Mexico that can verify their identity or authorise their deportation. The document allows people to travel freely within the country for 20 days. These people were then travelling to the US border to attempt entry. The numbers of such arrivals were considerate, indicating planned and coordinated movement: between January and October 2016, authorities in the south of Mexico issued 17,000 such salvoconductos, and tens of thousands of stranded migrants from these countries remained in the northern border cities of Mexico at the end of 2016 – a trend which continued after this. Initial research and interviews with these groups indicated that they were using people-smugglers from their point of departure, that they were instructed by these people-smugglers to solicit the salvoconducto once in Mexico, and that Mexican organised criminal groups were involved both with the facilitation of transport and the collecting of piso during their passage through Mexico (Martínez 2016, Ureste 2016).
Migration controls and the evolution of people-smuggling and organised crime: a morphogenetic perspective
It is established that increased migration controls result in an increase in the use of people-smugglers, the sophistication of the operations and the cost of journeys. Relying on published material and data gathered from interviews with experts from international organisations, academia and civil society in Mexico and El Salvador in 2015, this section examines the elaboration of people-smuggling from a morphogenetic perspective, to clarify the consequences of three sets of policy and examine how they led to the strengthening of organised crime and a parallel weakening of state integrity. Interestingly, these policies tend to be externalised from the destination state to the transit state, where their consequences manifest. There are two lines of argument that my analysis will feed into and extend: firstly, the adverse consequences of externalised migration controls and policy and, secondly, whether such consequences could have been foreseeable given they were implemented in an environment of organised crime and corruption.
The imposition of new, restrictive migration controls makes people more likely to use people-smugglers for their migration journeys, although their agency in doing so is constrained by factors such as social and financial capital. Such controls also affect the routes taken by people-smugglers as well as the piso paid to organised criminal groups and the bribes paid to officials, significantly increasing the cost to service users. These payments to organised crime groups and officials in turn have further implications in terms of strengthening of organised crime groups through their involvement. In addition to criminal groups benefitting significantly from the lucrative industry, their criminal governance is strengthened by this collusion to facilitate it, reinforcing their territorial control and their relationship with the state. Commentators note that while some officials believe that price increases demonstrate the deterrence effort’s effectiveness, “higher prices are not necessarily a substantial deterrent” (Andreas 2001: 116). Rather, the “most consequential impact of higher prices has been to enhance the wealth and power of smuggling groups” (Andreas 2001: 117).
Subsequent iterations of tighter US border controls and policy led to more people using people-smugglers and to a shift in the nature of people-smuggling, away from self-smuggling and use of the traditional coyotes to the use of more professional smugglers (Andreas 2001, 2011, Kyle and Dale 2011, Riesenfeld 2015, Hiemstra 2019, Frank-Vitale 2023). This resulted in highly sophisticated and well-organised operations and networks with an increasingly transcontinental nature (Andreas 2011, Casillas 2011, Riesenfeld 2015, Schmoll 2016, Triandafyllidou 2016). The high profits and low risk of the industry were attractive to large criminal groups, which moved into this business in addition to their other established enterprises. Kyle and Dale (2011) argue that the US controls were strategically designed to move people-smuggling away from being lots of small-scale operations managed by the individual facilitators to larger-scale operations managed by large criminal enterprises. Their reasoning is that law enforcement is better focused on disrupting a smaller number of larger criminal organisations than a larger number of smaller ones or individual operators (Kyle and Dale 2011: 35). There is now widespread concern that “beefed-up border control inadvertently fuels human smuggling and fortifies [the] criminal gangs that increasingly control that industry” (International Crisis Group 2016). Indeed, an independent journalist from Mexico City who I interviewed described the increased profits for people-smuggling following the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur as “a gift to organised crime”.
Commentary on how people-smuggling affects states has tended to take the perspective of its impact on and the actions of the destination state (for example, Koslowski 2011), rather than evaluating how people-smuggling operations and links to organised crime may affect the integrity of the transit state. However, some commentators have started examining the impact of people-smuggling on states other than the destination state, although their focus tends to be on countries of origin rather than transit (for example, Kyle and Dale 2011). This line of debate merits being extended because people-smuggling poses particular challenges to the transit state.
Organised crime and corrupt officials who exploit migrants in Mexico enjoy complete impunity and benefit directly from Plan Frontera Sur. Increased controls and enforcement since its implementation led to the need to corrupt or bribe officials and resulted in increases both in extortion by state agents and in their collusion with organised crime groups (International Crisis Group 2016, Bonello 2016, Hiemstra 2019). This direct and indirect involvement undermines the authorities and leads to a weakening of state integrity. The subversion of state authorities – simultaneously a tactic of organised crime and a prerequisite for its growth – is indicative of the symbiotic relationship between people-smugglers and the state and is increased by tighter migration controls (Andreas 2011). Furthermore, the links between the financial benefits of people-smuggling and other criminal activity in Mexico and Central America have led some to claim that people-smuggling feeds the cycle of violence that presents ongoing challenges across the region and increasingly drives displacement.6
The evolution of people-smuggling in Mexico and Central America: morphogenetic analysis
The key change in people-smuggling through Mexico since 2000 has been the development of organised crime as a structural force within migration journeys. Prior to this time, the only notable structural force involved was the state. Morphogenetic analysis is a useful tool to explain how and why this change happened, and to bring clarity to complex chains of elaboration that both affect and are affected by agency and structure. This section will examine changes following three specific events: the post-2001 migration policy and militarisation of the Mexico–US border, Mexico’s policy against organised crime from 2006, and the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur in 2014. First, it will show how tightened migratory controls led to a change in the nature of people-smuggling in the region. It will then analyse how organised crime became involved in people-smuggling at the point that coincides with its involvement in the exploitation and abuse of migrants, before ending with an examination of the changes precipitated by its implementation.
Chapter 3 explained how organised crime’s move to a strategy of territorial control led to its involvement in migration-related activities. Alongside this change, the introduction of more restrictive migration controls appears to have had an effect on people-smuggling by altering the structural factors and influencing migrant agency. Factors that lead to people using people-smugglers are: a need either to leave one’s country or to travel to another country; the absence of safe and legal passage; high levels of risk from state or criminal actors during transit; access to trusted people-smugglers; access to financial resources or to social capital with financial resources; and corruption or a lack of effective state presence to facilitate the journeys – namely state officials who can be bribed or who allow impunity for people-smugglers.
In-country migration controls increase the level of risk from state actors during transit, reduce the amount of the journey that can be conducted safely and restrict access to transport options, meaning that people are more likely to rely on a people-smuggler. Thus, changes to structural factors that increase migrants’ use of people-smugglers will serve to perpetuate people-smuggling. However, the territorial control of organised crime on the migration route has had a similar effect on migrant agency by increasing the risk from criminal actors during transit. By establishing a new structural factor on the migration journey – the threat from organised crime – migrant agency is affected, with many people compelled to travel with people-smugglers to protect themselves from such risk. In both situations, migrants’ agency serves to perpetuate people-smuggling and strengthen organised crime financially. This, however, results in weakened state integrity in the transit state through the corruption of state officials.
FIRST PHASE: POST-2001 MIGRATION CONTROLS
The post-2001 militarisation of the US border created “a more sophisticated and profitable human smuggling industry [… with] drastic changes in the level of profitability and organisation of clandestine border crossings” (Slack and Whiteford 2013: 199). This did not happen immediately but developed gradually over the following years. Due to the increased border controls, independent coyotes and small gangs of people-smugglers were no longer effective and an intermediary was needed to negotiate with state actors to allow passage. Similarly, migrants travelling without people-smugglers were unable to make such negotiations themselves, leading to an increased reliance on such services. The controls also made it more difficult to cross the US–Mexico border and people were pushed onto harsher and more isolated routes. This also led to an increased reliance on people-smugglers to guide the way, as well as to changes in the services they offered, such as food, accommodation and ‘safe houses’ to hide in.
The result was that people-smuggling became a specialised business, with individual operators organising themselves into large networks in order to share information, resources and negotiating power. These large networks either absorbed or displaced individual coyotes and small people-smuggling gangs, primarily due to the networks’ ability to negotiate with and bribe authorities.7 From a morphogenetic perspective, the imposition of migration controls led to a changed structural situation to which both people-smugglers and migrants were forced to respond, and this led to an elaboration of the people-smuggling services. A key element in this change was the adoption of negotiating intermediaries who subverted state authorities through corruption, which has implications for the integrity of the transit state.
SECOND PHASE: MEXICAN SECURITY POLICY AFTER 2006
From 2006, organised crime’s involvement in migration-related activities in Mexico, including people-smuggling, began in earnest. As a result of the security policies and crackdown on organised crime under the auspices of the ‘War on Drugs’ (also known as the ‘Kingpin Strategy’), large criminal groups in Mexico fragmented, battled between each other for territorial control and diversified their range of income-generating activities. The post-2001 changes described in the previous section meant that large, professional people-smuggling networks were now established in Mexico, operating with state collusion and impunity. This led to large organised crime groups realising that:
the vulnerability of undocumented immigrants facilitates criminal activity, diminishes the risk factor for members of the criminal organisation, subordinates less developed [smuggling] networks to larger groups, and opens up new avenues and new instances of mediation to inhibit actions taken by the government. (Casillas 2011: 307)
As well as the instant income-generating opportunities, systemic corruption and impunity for people-smuggling were key factors that attracted the involvement of organised crime, as well as the ability of such groups to move people along the same routes used for smuggling drugs.
The first key change was that every people-smuggler or coyote now had to pay the dues or extortion known as piso to pass – a financial model that is core to the post-2006 territorial control model of large organised crime groups in Mexico. With the development of more hierarchical structures, these networks of people-smugglers were displaced by large-scale, commercial people-smuggling gangs, who fortified their links with both the maras and government authorities and formed strategic alliances to operate more efficiently. Organised crime groups used extreme violence to ensure cooperation and to subordinate networks of people-smugglers (Casillas 2011). The models of organised crime involvement were not homogenous, but varied according to the group, with some being more predatory and others more transactional. Another significant change was the development of some aspects of people-smuggling into a protection racket, which is linked to the abuse and exploitation of migrants by organised crime groups in Mexico, including the perpetration of kidnapping, assaults, robberies and sexual violence (see Chapter 3). This affected migrant agency, with people being compelled to use people-smuggling services to protect against the threat of violence and extortion and the ‘enforcement’ if they did not.
As the morphogenetic framework accommodates changed situations in subsequent elaborations, we can see that the previous elaboration triggered by post-2001 migration controls had substantially changed people-smuggling operations, and that this then fostered the involvement of organised crime in people-smuggling. While internal changes within organised crime groups and the manner in which they operated were the catalyst for their diversification into new activities, one key factor that prompted their involvement in people-smuggling was the environment of impunity, corruption and state collusion. As such, the subversion of the state actors and authorities described in the previous elaboration enables this subsequent elaboration.
THIRD PHASE: THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PLAN FRONTERA SUR IN 2014
Following the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur in July 2014, there were evident changes in people-smuggling in Mexico. After an initial fall in the numbers of Central Americans apprehended at the US border, numbers increased significantly from mid-2015 to the end of 2016.8 This increase has been attributed to people-smugglers adapting to the new controls by using new routes and more bribes to ensure successful passage (Chishti and Hipsman 2016, Knippen et al. 2015).
On the ground, the most apparent changes during this time were the use of different modes of transport, routes and points of entry to the USA, and considerably higher costs to the service users. These higher costs were due to increased payments to both criminal and state actors: higher piso to organised crime and more bribes to a larger number of state agents (Bonello 2016, International Crisis Group 2016, Sanchez Soler 2016a, 2016b). State involvement in people-smuggling increased following the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur. According to experts who worked with migrants in southern Mexico, police and migration officials were reportedly paid bribes to allow lorries of migrants to pass at checkpoints. The increased cost of people-smuggling services implies a higher level of corruption involving a larger number of state agents and more senior officials, thus weakening state integrity.
Despite increased in-country migration controls in Mexico since 2014, figures show that apprehensions of Central American family groups and unaccompanied minors at the US border returned to high levels after an initial dip immediately following the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur, and that the number of family groups soon far exceeded the previous high levels.9 This was in spite of a dramatic rise in deportations of these groups from Mexico during the same period of time, indicating that people-smuggling organisations had responded to the changes, and smugglers were again operating successfully. This shows how organised crime is innovative and agile in terms of adapting to whatever policy changes or government responses are made. The previous elaborations of people-smuggling operations established the subversion of state authorities, and in this elaboration, this factor enables further corruption, which spreads to more agents and higher levels of officialdom, indicating a further weakening of the state.
Impact of migration controls on people-smuggling and related corruption
The involvement of organised crime in people-smuggling increased significantly between 2000 and 2016, and after the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur, some organised crime groups appeared to be profiting more from people-smuggling or becoming more involved in operation, facilitation and arranging transport. As the scope and level of involvement of organised crime in people-smuggling operations increased, there was a parallel increase in the scope of and level of corruption, “from simple bribes to more complex links between police, migration officials, and organised crime and gangs” (Hiemstra 2019:55). Successful people-smuggling operations and the agency of migrants led to the implementation of restrictive migration controls, in response to the large number of arrivals at the US border. At the point of implementation of Plan Frontera Sur in July 2014, sophisticated people-smuggling operations were facilitating migration journeys through Mexico with the deep involvement of organised crime groups and corrupt state officials. We can see that, in this changed environment, the imposition of migration controls resulted in changes in these people-smuggling services, which rapidly responded to the constraints of the new migration controls, further extending and entrenching the corruption of state officials to allow the passage of people.
From a morphogenetic perspective, we can see more clearly how each elaboration serves to strengthen criminal groups’ involvement, deepen corruption and facilitate the next elaboration. What is wholly apparent is that, given the extant context, Plan Frontera Sur led to increased corruption and subversion of state authorities in order to facilitate the continued movement of people, thus weakening state effectiveness and integrity. While elaborations of people-smuggling operations were a primary consequence of the increased migration controls, this weakening of state integrity was a secondary consequence. These findings have implications for our understanding of adverse consequences of policy and their foreseeability, as well as for conceptualising the secondary consequences of these.
Migrant agency in the context of people-smuggling
This section explores the impact these changes have had on service users, showing how agency is constrained and yet also has transforming properties. Migrants may use people-smugglers as a strategy for self-protection during transit, when their choice of transport options is limited because they risk apprehension by state agents or criminal actors. The increased use of people-smugglers is a consequence of migration controls, with people forced to use these services to complete their journey, and this both perpetuates people-smuggling and can lead to even tighter migration controls being imposed by states in response (Andreas 2001, 2011).
To understand the role of migrant agency in the establishment of Plan Frontera Sur my analysis draws on interviews conducted in late 2015 with fifty-eight people at a migrant and refugee shelter (Albergue Hermanos en el Camino) in Ixtepec, Mexico, and at the Returns Centre (Centro de Atención a Repatriados) in Santa Tecla, El Salvador. I examined the experiences of those who had used people-smugglers on this or a previous migration, and any factors that had constrained their current travel options. Trends in these data for arrivals of unaccompanied minors and families on the US border over a five-year period, contextualised with narrative accounts of changes from fieldwork interviews, reveal how both people-smuggling operations and migrant agency respond to changes in migration controls, and vice versa, and allow assessment of the efficacy of this policy.
Migrant agency: constrained by circumstance
From a perspective of migrant agency, the use of people-smugglers is “neither purely voluntary nor involuntary” (Kyle and Koslowski 2011: 10), and migrant agency is exercised only within the constraints presented by structural factors and by the individual’s personal situation. Chapter 1 examined how migrant agency and the decision to leave one’s country of origin was affected by a lack of effective state protection from organised crime. A number of contextual factors either constrained agency (absence of state protection in country of origin, a lack of safe and legal passage) or opened opportunities (social capital in destination). Similarly, a number of structural factors and social variables influence migrants’ decisions to use people-smuggling services and their ability to access them, including: a lack of safe and legal passage; the social and historical context of people-smugglers as trusted service providers; social capital in destination state; access to financial resources; vulnerability due to their demographic profile; threat from criminal actors during transit; and a pressing need to leave one’s country.
Migrant agency is affected by risk from both state and criminal actors during transit, and people use people-smugglers to protect from both of these groups. Increased migration controls also make people more likely to use people-smugglers for their migration journeys, although their agency in doing so is constrained by factors such as access to resources. After the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur, there was increased risk of apprehension by state actors as well as decreased access to public-transport options. Both these factors affected migrant agency by making them more inclined to use a people-smuggler to evade state agents and to provide transport. In addition, people continued to be compelled to use people-smugglers to avoid the threat of criminal violence in Mexico. The continued demand for these services obliged people-smuggling networks to evolve and adapt to the new migration-control environment, thus perpetuating people-smuggling.
Interviews with migrants and refugees in Mexico demonstrated how contextual factors (notably increases in the cost of people-smuggling and a lack of access to financial resources) restricted the agency of migrants and meant that they could not engage a people-smuggler. People who had previously travelled with people-smugglers spoke of the protection and benefits they offered: “With a pollero [people-smuggler] it was very easy – you don’t suffer at all. Alone, you suffer on the journey. You suffer hunger, thirst, cold, sleeping on the train tracks. You could easily die”; “You were there in five days with the guía [‘guide’ or people-smuggler]. I have already walked 12 days to get here”. However, one Honduran woman, who was pregnant and travelling with a small child, had been robbed and abandoned by her smuggler: “When we got to Tapachula he stole $100 and left me there”.
Nobody mentioned that they would not have been able to access a trusted people-smuggler, but several people said that they had been unable to use people-smugglers because of a lack of resources and the increased cost. They said that this was largely due to the increased payments to both criminal groups and state agents that had significantly inflated people-smuggling costs after the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur: “No money for that. It’s too expensive now”; “I ran out of money, so I don’t have a pollero anymore”. A young Guatemalan man who had used people-smuggling services on two previous occasions (in 2011 and 2015) said that the only thing that had changed over that time was that the price had almost doubled, explaining that this increase was to cover the cost of paying cuotas or ‘fees’ during the journey. An 18-year-old man from Salvador, who had previously travelled with a people-smuggler in 2008, detailed the increase in costs:
You needed $7,000 before – now it’s $10,000. For this reason, I couldn’t use the pollero. This increase is because they have to pay more to migra [immigration agents] and the police now. And the cost per head to the Zetas [a Mexican organised crime group] is also up – $500 per head to the Zetas in 2008, but $1,000 per head now. They pay the Zetas, migra, the Federal Police …
Others were less sure about who was actually paid, but several detailed bribes being paid to or demanded by state officials. A young Guatemalan man described the situation: “When I went with a guía we were stopped at the checkpoints and they asked me for money, maybe 150 pesos. They took me off the bus. This happened six or seven times. They had the same uniforms each time – dark blue uniforms.” The continuing and increasing flow of people out of Northern Central America indicates that agency is not constrained so much as to prevent migration, but that people were either forced to pay these increased rates or to travel without the benefits of people-smuggling services.
Migrant agency: transforming power and emergent properties
Analysis of data on the apprehension of family groups and unaccompanied minors at the Southwest US border over a five-year period demonstrates the transforming power of agency and the emergent properties of both people-smuggling and migrant agency. It shows how the substantial increase in the number of Central American family groups and unaccompanied minors reaching the US border in 2014 led to new policy, namely the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur and its intensive in-country migration controls in Mexico. These data show how the number of apprehensions fell immediately after it was implemented, before rising significantly.
The figures for family groups and unaccompanied minors are pertinent for two reasons. Firstly, it was the significant increase in the arrivals of these specific groups that led to Plan Frontera Sur. Secondly, these particular groups are most likely to use people-smugglers to facilitate their journey, so their successful arrival at the US border is a fair reflection of the success of people-smuggling services. As a result, these data are most likely to give an indication of how people-smuggling both contributed to and responded to the imposition of these migration controls.
FIRST PHASE: AGENCY LEADS TO STRUCTURAL ELABORATION IN TRANSIT STATE
Southwest border apprehensions of Central American family groups and unaccompanied minors had been at fairly low and steady numbers for some time, with an average of 913 family groups and 2,265 unaccompanied minors apprehended each month in 2012. However, these apprehensions increased significantly in March 2013 and continued to rise, reaching a peak in June 2014 when 16,330 family groups and 10,620 unaccompanied minors were apprehended at the US border.10 In response, President Obama declared this to be an “urgent humanitarian situation” and, following his meeting with Mexican President Peña Nieto, Mexico implemented Plan Frontera Sur in August 2014. Designed to curb irregular flows of people and to protect the human rights of migrants, this policy manifested as harsh in-country migration controls, prevention from travelling on the goods trains collectively known as La Bestia (‘the beast’), and a huge rise in deportations from Mexico of Central Americans in transit.
While there was arguably political pressure on Mexico from the USA to deliver these migration controls, morphogenetic analysis can bring clarity to how this happened. From an agency perspective, people were able to reach the US border because they had access to successful people-smuggling services, and this led to the high level of arrivals at the US border that precipitated the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur. This demonstrates the transformative properties of migrant agency and how this results in structural elaboration.
SECOND PHASE: AGENCY CONTINUES DESPITE PREVIOUS STRUCTURAL ELABORATION
Immediately after the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur, there was a significant reduction in the number of family groups and unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala apprehended at the US border. By September 2014, apprehensions had fallen to 2,301 family groups and 2,416 unaccompanied minors, and they remained around this level for several months. This demonstrates that the controls had some initial success in their objective of constraining the migratory flow. However, in March 2015, the numbers of family groups and unaccompanied minors started to rise noticeably and continued to grow throughout the following year. This was particularly so for family groups from Northern Central America, with the number of apprehensions in December 2015 being higher than the total for the last three months of 2013 combined, and then rising to an average of 8,000 a month during the latter half of 2016.11
Experts working in the field told me they believed the increase in arrivals during the latter half of 2015 was the result of more successful people-smuggling operations that had rapidly adapted to the changed structural situation by using alternative routes and bribing officials more extensively (Hiemstra 2019). Indeed, it is hard to conceive of any other rational reason why such large numbers of people managed to avoid the intense, new in-country migration controls in Mexico, especially given the concurrent increases in deportations of these very groups and individuals from Mexico during this period. Furthermore, the significantly higher number of family groups that arrived in the USA during 2016 suggests that people-smuggling strengthened following the implementation of Plan Frontera Sur.
Impact of agency on the deployment of policy and on its efficacy
People were compelled to use people-smuggling services to protect against apprehension by state agents, to protect from criminal actors and to transport increasing numbers of women and children from Northern Central America. Although people’s agency was constrained both by migration controls and a lack of resources to access people-smuggling services, this did not stop them from migrating, especially if they would be at risk if they did not leave their country.
Migrant agency, whether exercised via people-smuggling services or not, resulted in unprecedented arrivals at the US border of those most likely to use people-smuggling services – family groups and unaccompanied minors. This, in turn, led to structural elaborations in the form of restrictive migration controls that were implemented in the transit state. While the resulting increased costs of people-smuggling services did constrain migrant agency in some instances – as indicated by the narratives of some of my interviewees – other people with access to financial resources did not have their agency similarly constrained and were able to use these services.
From this we can see that migrant agency responds to the changed circumstances, and that mobility continues in spite of both the increased migration controls and the significantly increased costs of people-smuggling. These figures indicate that people-smuggling groups responded quickly and agilely to the new controls, by adopting new routes and further corrupting state authorities. They also show us that the emergent properties of migrant agency, together with the emergent properties of people-smuggling services, act as a stronger force than migration controls. However, when migrants exercise their agency in this way, it can lead to state actions, such as the deployment of externalised migration controls from the destination state to the transit state. This shows how agency and people-smuggling contribute to the efficacy gap of migration policy, as well as to the initial development of such policy.
People-smuggling, corruption and state integrity
Analysis within the morphogenetic framework enables us to see more clearly how the dynamics of people-smuggling interrelate, how structural factors affect agency, and how agency can simultaneously alter structural factors. This provides a coherent picture of the complex dynamics, revealing the emergent and transforming properties of each, and extending understanding in response to calls for a structure–agency approach to this topic (Baird 2013, Sanchez 2015). Migrants continue to leave their home countries in spite of the structural challenges (migration controls, danger in transit, lack of safe and legal passage), relying on people-smugglers more so because of these factors. Successful people-smuggling can, in turn, result in the implementation of more restrictive migration controls, demonstrating how “the State help[s] to make smuggling and how smuggling help[s] to (re) make the policing apparatus of the State” (Andreas 2011: 139).
This analysis enables new insight into how the adverse consequences of migration control develop and, further to this, how the externalisation of migration controls can be detrimental to the transit state. Due to the sophisticated people-smuggling operations and networks in the region, migration controls are ineffective in stopping migratory flows and instead have adverse consequences. Far from interrupting migration flows, such policy has served to increase the involvement of large organised crime groups in facilitating people-smuggling journeys and to increase the profitability of this activity (Hiemstra 2019). Migration controls heighten security risks for undocumented migrants in border zones or throughout the transit state, if they are implemented in-country – as Plan Frontera Sur was. They thus increase the likelihood that such people will use people-smugglers. Subsequently, people-smuggling becomes more profitable to a greater range of criminal actors and corrupt state agents. As such, it serves to increase the usurping of state powers by criminal entities in the transit state, including the control of borders and entry of foreign nationals, further entrenching their “privatisation of the border” (Turati 2015). Further, this analysis provides a model to understand how things are likely to develop and expand – as has played since out in Mexico, with the increased direct involvement of the major organised crime groups and the increasingly extracontinental nature of people-smuggling flows (see Dudley et al. 2023).
Parallel to this strengthened role of large criminal organisations in people-smuggling is a weakening of the state, indicated by increased corruption and collusion of state agents and institutions to ensure the passage of people. As suggested previously, earlier policies may have – perhaps intentionally – changed the face of people-smuggling in the region and moved it into larger and more organised operations (Kyle and Dale 2011). What such strategy to failed to address, however, was the way in which organised crime groups operate their businesses and the models they use, namely: protection rackets enforced by actual or threatened violence; leveraging of existing criminal networks and development of new alliances; corruption of state agents and institutions; and expansion to new markets through new transcontinental crime networks. Further to this, there appears to have been no effective strategy to disrupt such operations, leading to a worsening situation in Mexico, marked by the strengthening of organised crime groups and the parallel weakening of state integrity.
It is generally accepted that increased reliance on and demand for people-smugglers can be ‘unintended consequences’ of migration policy and that this may be linked to organised crime (Cornelius 2001, 2004, Cornelius et al. 2004, de Haas 2011, Czaika and de Haas 2013, 2016, Schmoll 2016). Whereas this is a primary consequence of increased migration controls, the impact on state integrity is a secondary consequence. This consequence – increased corruption – then becomes a contextual factor in subsequent elaborations. This book extends understanding about the adverse consequences of policy by examining them not just from a structure–agency perspective, but also as an integral part of the cycle of change.
Although there is agreement that increased migration controls lead to increased people-smuggling (Andreas 2011, Kyle and Koslowski 2011, Doomernik 2013), some commentators (for example, Sanchez 2015, Kyle and Dale 2011) further claim that the impact of such controls and state actions is deliberate and that the increased involvement of organised crime in people-smuggling is not so much an unintended consequence as an intended one. Kyle and Dale (2011) have argued that previous migration policy had a deliberate and planned strategy to push people-smuggling in the region away from individual operators and into the control of large criminal organisations. Regardless of any subjective perception of intent, this has indeed been the objective outcome. The above analysis shows how such a strategy has had serious implications for the integrity of the transit state because of the complicity of state actors in people-smuggling – both directly through bribery of officials and indirectly through impunity and collusion with organised crime – and because of criminal groups’ encroachment into that last bastion of the state: control of its borders.
Given the changed environment when Plan Frontera Sur was implemented and the understanding of how previous policy had affected the people-smuggling in the region, it would be clear that this new policy would further aggravate these issues. If the argument (Kyle and Dale 2011) stands that previous migration policy was deliberately designed to engineer change in the nature and control of people-smuggling in the region, then it follows that there must have been foreseeable consequences of Plan Frontera Sur and that the policy was implemented with awareness of this, nonetheless. This all raises some salient questions about state responsibility, which are considered in Chapter 5. The analysis in this chapter can further inform understanding of the evolving situation in the region following subsequent iterations of policy and also has global relevance, and this will be discussed in the Conclusion and Reflections chapter.
Notes
1. Coyotaje is a Mexican term that refers to the traditional form of people-smuggling, where trusted individuals or coyotes guided people across the US–Mexico border. The terms coyote, pollero and guía are used interchangeably across the Mesoamerica region; pollero became the most frequently used to refer to the front-end service providers of larger people-smuggling operations.
2. See Andreas (2011) for a detailed historical context and comprehensive analysis of the development of people-smuggling in the region.
3. In particular, the maritime route off the coast of Chiapas in southern Mexico was being used much more intensely to transport people directly from Guatemala to Oaxaca. This coast is under the control of large drug-trafficking groups, and during 2016, there were territorial battles over control of the coastline through Oaxaca and up to Colima (Lakhani 2016).
4. For example, migrants from East Africa were being transported along land routes to South Africa and then smuggled by air into Brazil. Once in South America, they were travelling by sea or land to Costa Rica or Panama, or by air directly from Brazil to Mexico. Chinese and Indian migrants were often being transported to Guatemala and travelling from there by land to Mexico (UNODC 2012, 2015).
5. In the first eight months of 2016, nearly 8,000 migrants from Africa and Asia sought the assistance of INM in Tapachula – a four-fold increase on all those registered in the whole of Mexico during 2014 (Lakhani 2016). A similar trend emerged at the US–Mexico border where, in addition to thousands of people from Africa, 11,000 Haitians arrived between May and October 2016; by October, Haitians were arriving in Tijuana at a rate of 700 a day (CNDH 2018).
6. Interview with an official from an international organisation, Mexico City, November 2015.
7. Interviews with an academic researcher, San Cristobal de las Casas, September 2015, an academic researcher, Mexico City, October 2015, and an academic researcher, San Salvador, October 2015.
8. US Department of Homeland Security, 2016. “United States Border Patrol Southwest Family Unit Subject and Unaccompanied Alien Children Apprehensions Fiscal Year 2016”.
9. United States Border Patrol Southwest Family Unit Subject and Unaccompanied Alien Children Apprehensions Fiscal Years 2012–16.
10. United States Border Patrol Southwest Family Unit Subject and Unaccompanied Alien Children Apprehensions Fiscal Years 2012–16.
11. United States Border Patrol Southwest Family Unit Subject and Unaccompanied Alien Children Apprehensions Fiscal Years 2012–16.