513 Migrants in Two Tractor-Trailers

Mexican police, screening tractor-trailers for illegal cargo with X-rays, detected more than 500 people crammed inside two trucks. US border controls and kidnapping dangers in Mexico force immigrants to turn to smuggling cartels. Each immigrant reportedly paid smugglers $7000 for passage to the US – more than $3.5 million in all. “[A]mid the drug war, Mexico's southern border has become increasingly lawless, with cartel paramilitaries carrying out brutal massacres to control smuggling routes,’ writes Ioan Grillo for Time. The flow of illegal migrants from Mexico to the US, an illegal business estimated at $6.6 billion annually, divides the region: US firms seek cheap labor, but citizens reject an underground society; Central American governments protest rough treatment of their citizens at the hands of smugglers or enforcement officers; Mexicans resent serving as immigration police for the US. Low wages and high unemployment rates in Central America drive migrants to take the many risks. – YaleGlobal