Seth Harp reports on the cartel-controlled coyote networks operating in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, where record numbers of migrants are crossing the border.
is holding is a plastic toy. He and two other kids from Honduras are playing on the pedestal of a statue of an Aztec eagle in Reynosa, a Mexican city just south of the tail end of Texas. The three of them are wearing face masks, as are most of the Central Americanpacked together, sleeping rough, in this city square, Plaza de la República. It is May 14th, 2021, and cases of Covid-19 are common among the multitudes of deportees being turned back from the United States in record numbers.
A couple of young guys in camouflage cargo shorts go around visiting with various groups of migrants. Their yellow traffic vests identify them as, or smugglers’ assistants: gofers for the network of coyotes that operates from here all the way to Miguel Alemán, 60 miles farther inland, a notorious cartel redoubt scarred by 20 years of gangland warfare that has been the epicenter of mass migration in 2021.
Including all sectors, from Texas to California, Border Patrol encountered 687,854 migrants over the first five months of 2021. Some amount of double-counting is surely going on.
Adding to its disrepute, the business of smuggling people over the border is now entirely controlled by organized crime, at least in the Rio Grande Valley. “The, they’re more involved than they’ve ever been,” says Jerry Robinette, a former special agent in charge of the South Texas division of the Department of Homeland Security. “The sheer numbers that are coming across are providing more incentive to them.
Yet it would be an oversimplification to equate coyotes with the cartel. According to Correa’s research, based on extensive interviews with migrants at shelters throughout Mexico, the market for human smuggling is “segmented,” with the first leg of the clandestine journey being arranged by more or less independent groups. “On WhatsApp, on Facebook,” she says, “they are now advertising trips like a tourist company.
Los Zetas, initially comprised of Mexican special-forces deserters, some of whom had been trained by the U.S. at Fort Bragg, ruled the Mexican underworld with extreme violence for years, but it is much reduced from its peak strength. Now known as the Cartel del Noreste, CDN, or Northeast Cartel, it has been pushed back by the Gulf Cartel to Ciudad Mier, nine miles northwest of Miguel Alemán.
Though it’s a humanitarian mission, with no barbed wire or guns, the open-air shelter has the feel of a prison compound. There are tall metal gates with tiny barred windows that close with a loud crash. Everyone has on face masks, heightening the sense of 21st-century dystopia. A construction project is underway to double the size of the facility, and 20-odd migrant men are working with hammers and shovels to build a cinder-block wall, their heads wrapped in T-shirts against the sun and dust.
On May 3rd, on a bus from Monterrey to Miguel Alemán, their intended crossing point, they were intercepted by men with guns, who took a group including Cesar to an abandoned house in a rural area, where they were separated by age and gender and locked in bedrooms. The kidnappers were not aggressive and behaved more or less politely the entire time, he says, but he was given only one meal a day.
They’re not here, I realize, because their room and board is already paid for. “The criminal element,” says Mother Carmona, “they have their own stash houses,” in the rural areas west of here, toward Miguel Alemán. Across northern Tamaulipas, the Gulf Cartel maintains a network of ranches and abandoned houses, and controls the rural roads leading up to the border. Access to this infrastructure, as well as safe passage, is what the cartel charges for.
The closer you get to the international bridge, the more dilapidated and boarded-up Roma gets. From a lookout point downtown, Miguel Alemán is easily visible across the river. It looks like any other small border city, with low concrete roofs amid green trees and a handful of cellphone towers. But it is a true no-go zone, even by the standards of northern Mexico, and turnover at the top of the Gulf Cartel has made the situation even more uncertain.
Right away, on Zapata Street, we see buildings that remain gutted by arson attacks from the fiercest narco battles of 10 years ago. We pass a spot where, in 2019, Los Zetas left a bunch of decapitated heads in an ice chest. A few shops are open, selling clothing and foodstuffs, and we pass two pairs of women and girls on the sidewalk, but the streets are otherwise bereft of people.
The man known as El Comandante, a coyote boss who runs a network out of Miguel Alemán, a small border city at the center of the Valley’s human-trafficking corridor.Back in Brownsville, we get a phone call around 10 p.m. It’s El Comandante. At first the cell signal is bad and we can’t tell what he’s talking about, but it’s something to do with Houston. As it turns out, he’s angry about a TV report he has seen.
The war between the CDG and Los Zetas “affect us a lot,” he says. “Because our territory is from Monterrey to Ciudad Mier.” If Los Zetas rip off a load of migrants, they’ll charge $500 a head to return them, he says. “If we pay, they’ll let them go. If not, they’ll leave them there on the ground.”
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