U.S. Customs and Border Protection<\/a> (CBP) reports that despite the COVID-19 pandemic and related travel restrictions, human smugglers continue to endanger migrants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cSmugglers\nexpose migrants to the deadly virus by forcing them to travel inside crowded\ntrailers, with no ventilation, no water and no food for hours, even days. The\ntractor-trailer is the final trap of their treacherous journey,\u201d CBP said last\nmonth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In\nfiscal year 2020 through August, Border Patrol agents in Texas\u2019 Rio Grande Valley\nand Laredo sectors reported more than 226 tractor-trailer apprehensions\ninvolving 3,740 migrants. For Laredo, the human cargo count was up 37 percent\nover last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond\nthe raw numbers are documented atrocities \u2013 sexual abuse, extortion, assault,\nkidnapping and exploitation at the hands of human smugglers who get upwards of\n$12,000 per migrant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSmuggling\nis a multibillion-dollar industry that only enriches criminal organizations,\u201d\nsaid Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan. \u201cAfter extracting every dollar they\ncan, they are indifferent to your removal from the United States, but they hope\nyou come back to provide another paycheck.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MPI doesn\u2019t help by presenting \u201csemi-structured\u201d (read: leading) interviews as serious, objective research. Intimating that legitimate law-enforcement operations are akin to the Gestapo rounding up people in the middle of the night only serves to whip up more hysteria. Then again that may be just the point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a recent survey of Latino students, more than half said they suffered from anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression. Why? La migra! Broadly asserting that \u201cimmigration enforcement has generated fear in immigrant communities across the country,\u201d the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) pointed to mental and emotional concerns voiced by young Hispanics in Harris<\/p>\n
Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":10765,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[7],"tags":[1524,960,873],"yst_prominent_words":[2043,2300,2437,2435,10030,1963,10033,3129,3452,10031,2188,2225,10034,4744,2558,2167,10032,4039],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23678"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23678"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23681,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23678\/revisions\/23681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23678"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}