“Let Mexicans interested in crossing to the United States leave their message”, continues one of the many advertisements for smugglers spotted on TikTok by a journalist from the AFP digital investigation service.
The announcement is accompanied by a photo of a group of people in camouflage clothing, advancing at night between shrubs in an arid place on the border between the two countries, similar to the landscapes of the Sonoran Desert (northwest of Mexico).
Another account offers migrants to cross to the other end of the border in the state of Tamaulipas (northeast), with a photo of minors aboard an inflatable boat. “We also do crossings with children and families,” the announcement states.
Similar profiles can be counted in the hundreds in other countries of departure of candidates for the trip to the United States (Guatemala, Colombia and Ecuador), noted AFP.
“Pollero”
Under the label #pollero (the Spanish expression for smugglers in Mexico), the alleged traffickers are also recruiting drivers for their illegal immigration network in Arizona, with the promise of a salary of 3,000 to 15,000 dollars.
“If you have a car and you want to make easy money, write to me”, announces a message in English.
For $7,000 per person, migrants are transported in the trailer of a van or a standing truck, piled up, without air, for hundreds of kilometers, sometimes with death at the end of the road.
On June 27, 56 migrants were found suffocated to death in an abandoned trailer near San Antonio, Texas.
On December 9, 2021, 56 other migrants also died in a truck accident on a highway in Chiapas in southern Mexico.
A total of 7,661 migrants have died or disappeared en route to the United States since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Also on TikTok, migrants find advice and experience sharing for their perilous crossing.
Near the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (Comar) in Mexico City, Brenand Vilne, a 30-year-old Haitian, shows on his phone publications he sought to cross the Darien, the forest between Colombia and Panama where many refugees lose their lives.
Andrea, 25, and Beatriz, 29, left Venezuela last October. Andrea shows AFP the profile of a young woman who has managed to enter the United States, and who gives advice to those who are still on the way (medicines…). “Everyone’s experience is very personal,” explains Beatriz.
TikTok says it prohibits the “promotion of criminal activity”.
“We do not tolerate content that promotes human exploitation, including human trafficking,” a spokesperson for the network in Latin America told AFP.
Attacked on several fronts, TikTok, a subsidiary of the Chinese group Bytedance, claims to have eliminated 82% of videos linked to criminal practices on its own initiative in the third quarter of 2022.
Its CEO Shou Chew will be heard Thursday by a powerful parliamentary committee of the House of Representatives in Washington.
300 investigation files
Mexican authorities conduct their own investigations and cybersecurity operations to combat organized crime online.
In a room full of computers in Mexico City, experts from the General Prosecutor’s Criminal Investigation Agency have been tracking social media profiles since 2017.
The unit has been involved in some 300 human trafficking investigation files, according to an official spokesman, Rolando Rosas.
Rosas emphasizes the good cooperation with the platforms: “Digital service companies are obliged to provide information in the event of a crime”.
The unit’s agents intervene when a trafficker’s payment is negotiated or materialized by cybernetic means, according to the head of the unit, Benjamín Oviedo.
An IOM report from February confirms that TikTok is used as a “means of promotion” by smugglers, for example by showing videos of “successful cases of irregular crossings” in the United States.
IOM conducted its survey of 531 migrants in transit, of whom 64% said they had access to a smartphone and the internet during their trip.
