“Leaving this weekend.” Alleged smugglers use TikTok to recruit candidates for the illegal passage from Mexico to the United States, a challenge for the authorities and for the platform, whose executive director was interviewed this Thursday in Washington.
“Let Mexicans interested in crossing into the United States leave their message,” continues one of the many smuggler ads seen on TikTok by a journalist from the AFP digital investigative service.
The announcement is accompanied by a photo of a group of people in camouflage clothing, advancing at night through bushes in an arid place on the border between the two countries, similar to the landscapes of the Sonoran desert (northwestern 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 crossovers with children and families,” the ad says.
Similar profiles can be counted by the hundreds in other countries of departure of candidates for the trip to the United States (Guatemala, Colombia and Ecuador), AFP pointed out.
Under the hashtag #pollero (the Spanish expression for smugglers in Mexico), the suspected traffickers are also recruiting drivers for their illegal immigration ring in Arizona, with the promise of a salary of $3,000 to $15,000.
For $7,000 per person, migrants are transported in the trailer of a pickup or a stopped truck, piled up, out of air, for hundreds of miles, sometimes with death at the end of the road.
On June 27, 56 migrants were found dead from suffocation in an abandoned trailer near San Antonio, Texas. On December 9, 2021, another 56 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 share experiences for their dangerous journey. Near the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (Comar) in Mexico City, Brenand Vilne, a 30-year-old Haitian, shows on his phone publications that he sought to cross the Darién, the jungle 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 road (medication…). “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 removed 82% of the videos linked to criminal practices on its own initiative in the third quarter of 2022. Its CEO, Shou Chew, was heard this Thursday by a powerful parliamentary commission. of the House representatives in Washington.
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 Attorney General’s Office 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. He highlights the good cooperation with the platforms: “Digital service companies are obliged to provide information in case of crime.”
The unit’s agents intervene when a trafficker’s payment is negotiated or materialized by cyber means, according to the head of the unit, Benjamín Oviedo.
An IOM report from February confirms that TikTok is used as a “promotional medium” by smugglers, for example, showing videos of “successful cases of irregular crossings” in the United States. The IOM conducted its survey of 531 migrants in transit, of which 64% said they had access to a smartphone and the internet during their journey.
Source: BFM TV
