Trafficking women and children across the U.S. border from Mexico has been a lucrative business. These women and children are at the mercy of the traffickers. Many are raped and some are murdered during the transit

Question

If their families are known to have money, the women and children may be held for ransom. The coyotes who transport these victims across the border know that it is unlikely that the crimes would be reported because the victims know they are guilty of a crime as well as of crossing the border illegally. People pay a lot of money to be helped across the border by these criminals. Why would these victims get into this situation to begin with, let alone pay for it? What could be done to thwart the efforts of the coyotes?

Answer 1

Of the more than 50,000 people trafficked annually to the United States, about 33% are Latin Americans. Women and children seeking work in the United States must rely on labor traffickers to help them sneak across the border. Sex traffickers lure the victims with false promises of jobs, sometimes kidnapping those they transport and selling them. Although there are some who voluntarily exchange sex or work for transport, the majority of women and children crossing the border are tricked, threatened, and/or forced into subservient activities.

Pimps often work closely with coyotes. Coyotes transport women and children across the border for a reduced fee, sexually assaulting and prostituting the women as payment. Instead of being reunited with their families across the border, children may be sold to gangs who prostitute them. The women and children often never arrive at their destination and the coyotes tell the families that the victims died during the border crossing. Runaway children are especially at high risk to be taken advantage of.

Realizing that many victims are tricked into crossing the border with the promise of safety and success, an obvious countermeasure would be to educate those victims before they make the mistake to begin with. This would need to especially be done in the border towns where many of the victims shop around for help across the border. By using the problem solving triangle, a popular tool used in understanding routine activities and crime prevention, crime can be prevented in one of three different areas – stop the perpetrator; make the location a difficult place to commit the crime; or, in this case, take the potential victim out of the equation.

While law enforcement is attempting to arrest human smugglers at the borders and on the freeways, maybe other organizations could help with efforts in educating and subsequently convincing potential victims to avoid getting into the situation to begin with. This upfront thinking (being proactive) is right in line with problem solving techniques that many law enforcement agencies are utilizing. With the hype of community-oriented policing and problem solving (COPPS) in the last decade, departments are making better efforts to get to the root of problems at the deepest levels and working harder to prevent problems from occurring as opposed to being totally reactive.