Uber for the cartels: Mexican drug lords are recruiting US teens to traffic people and narcotics across the border using TikTok – in return for exorbitant cash rewards

Mexican drug lords are recruiting American teenagers to smuggle people and narcotics across the border via TikTok – in exchange for exorbitant cash rewards.

In just over a year, more than a hundred minors (some as young as 12 and 13 years old) have been taken into custody. Many have been lured into illegal smuggling by social media posts promising significant financial rewards.

“We’ve arrested over a hundred young people in this county in the last 18 months, driving grandma’s car, a friend’s car, mom and dad’s car, and it’s social media,” County said Sheriff Mark Dannels. told CBS News.

Human smugglers are advertising their illegal border crossing services into the US on TikTok in exchange for cash, a USA Today report found in June.

“It’s 100% Uber for the cartels,” Deputy Chris Oletsky, a 20-year Marine veteran who joined the local sheriff’s department three years ago, told CBS.

Human smugglers are advertising their illegal border crossing services into the US in exchange for cash on TikTok and bragging about how easy it is to do so

Cartels target teens with social media ads

Last month we also saw migrant smugglers boast about how easy it is to cross the US border illegally, in a confrontational clip showing a long line of men entering the US smiling and waving at the camera.

The alarming footage, filmed near Lukeville, Arizona, shows a long line of migrant men casually climbing through a hole in the US-Mexico border wall and meeting no resistance or questioning.

In response to the growing problem, Arizona passed strict human trafficking laws last year.

The majority of teens arrested since then are U.S. citizens who came from outside the province, Dannels told CBS.

The comprehensive USA Today report details the ways in which both migrants and human smugglers are harnessing the power of social media to advise others making the journey and promote their services.

Migrants await processing by U.S. Border Patrol agents after crossing into the United States from Mexico last month in Yuma, Arizona

A video of migrant smugglers bragging about how easy it is to cross the US-Mexico border has attracted attention on social media

Cartels use TikTok to target teens with social media ads

Vergel has gained over 10,000 followers who are eager to consume his cross-border content

US agencies have repeatedly warned that TikTok ‘creates an environment ripe for the manipulation of migration policy information at the border’

TikTok has become a place where migrants looking for information on how to make the journey, and smugglers advertising their services, can go to find tips and promote their product

A caption in Spanish for the video reads, “Achieving their goals, gentlemen,” followed by two prayer emojis. The text on the video also describes the crossing as a ‘desert adventure’.

The remote outpost where the video was shot is about two and a half hours from Tucson, which has become the busiest point of illegal entry into the country, with 1,300 people a day entering the U.S. through this area, according to federal statistics.

Border police officers told the New York Post they believe smugglers are making these videos to promote the crossing to others.

It’s “free information for everyone,” an unnamed agent told the Post.

Migrants walk across the Darien Gap from Colombia to Panama in hopes of reaching the U.S. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have risked the perilous journey through the jungle in recent years, and the flow is at a record pace this year

A second group of migrants was taken by bus from Texas to Los Angeles on Saturday and dropped off at Union Station downtown

Migrants reportedly pay smugglers anywhere from $200 to $10,000 per person for help crossing the border.

The issue of illegal migration at the border has become a hot political topic in recent months.

The United Nations International Organization for Migration has also warned about the trend of smugglers and migrants posting about their illegal activities on social media, and specifically on TikTok.

‘The TikTok platform is used to promote the ‘services’ of human traffickers through short videos. These videos show successful cases of irregular border crossings and compelling images intended to attract the attention of individuals seeking to migrate illegally with the assistance of a third party,” an IOM said report which examined the use of social media platforms in U.S. human trafficking.

An estimated two million people attempt to cross the southern border with the US every year. Many, many thousands of these people are abused and extorted by drug cartels that control the trafficking routes in Mexico.

Others do not survive the arduous journey through rivers with strong currents, jungles and stretches of hot and dry terrain.

Last year, some 853 migrants died trying to enter the U.S. illegally — the highest number ever recorded — according to CBP data.