Human traffickers at the U.S.-Mexico border earn up to $60,000 per migrant they sneak across the border, and smugglers in one sector earn up to $1.5 billion a year, according to a recently released congressional report.
“Our Sector Intelligence Unit estimates that the weekly revenue from illegal human smuggling in our sector alone, the Del Rio Sector alone, is more than $30 million per week,” Jason Owens, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, told members of the House Oversight Committee. .
If the department’s estimates are correct, human smugglers who sneak migrants into the Del Rio sector alone would earn $1.56 billion in annual revenue.
Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., called the report “heartbreaking.”
“This border crisis is unlike anything we have ever experienced as a nation,” Boebert wrote on X.
Migrants crossing the Rio Grande River illegally into the US are keeping children above the water
The report reveals testimony from nine Border Patrol chiefs responsible for various sectors along the U.S.-Mexico border. The agents have a combined 225 years of law enforcement experience within the Border Patrol, the report said.
“I’ve seen anything from as little as $2,000, $3,000 all the way up to $50,000 for someone who’s coming from, like, a very far away country, or, you know, wants to guarantee entry into the U.S.,” Dustin Caudle, deputy chief patrol officer of the Yuma sector, testified.
But Laredo Sector Chief Patrol Agent Joel Martinez said prices could go even higher.
“For someone from China, we’ve heard it has at least increased to $60,000 per person,” he said.
According to the report, migrants pay an average of $8,600 in fees to cartels to be smuggled across the border.
Boebert, a member of the House Oversight Committee that conducted the report, called the findings “heartbreaking” and said the border crisis is “unlike anything we have ever experienced as a nation.”
Thousands of migrants illegally crossed the Texas border town of Eagle Pass in December
Migrants who tried to evade border police are awaiting treatment
Migrants arrive at the US-Mexico border outside El Paso, Texas, awaiting entry into the US
No one crosses the border without first paying the cartels, a border agent testified
‘When I started in ’95, people could just reach the border and cross independently. You know, now no one comes over without paying the cartels,” Tucson Sector Chief Patrol Agent John Modlin testified. “So the cartels determine when people cross, how many people cross at once, all that.”
“It’s all – it’s all controlled by them,” he continued.
Modlin added that he has witnessed migrants being beaten for trying to enter the US without first paying the cartels.
In addition, Martinez testified that the cartels have been known to shoot people who cross without their permission.
Since Biden took office through the end of fiscal year 2023, there have been more than 6.2 million encounters with illegal border crossers, according to the report.
In December 2023 alone, Border Patrol estimates that more than 300,000 migrants entered the US illegally.