The Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration along the southern border has revealed the startling — and deep — involvement not of foreign drug cartels, but of U.S. citizens, The Washington Post reported.
More than 60% of people convicted of smuggling in federal courts in recent years have been U.S. citizens, the majority of them with little or no criminal history, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the Post reported.
The nabbed smugglers have included truck drivers, single mothers, oil-field workers, and high school students, according to federal court and state court records in Texas, the Post reported.
"It's pretty lucrative if you can get away with it," Brady Waikel, U.S. Border Patrol's assistant chief agent in Del Rio, Texas, told the Post. "Nobody thinks they're going to get caught."
Noncitizens accounted for about 80% of convicted smugglers in the mid-1990s, when U.S. authorities were logging more than 1 million apprehensions at the border each year, according to the Sentencing Commission, the Post reported.
But as the government crackjed down on border security, smugglers turned to U.S. citizens for their flawless English and knowledge of local roads, which can help migrants bypass Border Patrol checkpoints after entering the United States, the Post reported.
Authorities say some smugglers charged a few hundred dollars, others asked for thousands. And according to the Post, some of those caught said they did it to buy diapers, pay for college tuition, to resolve a debt, or as a favor.
Most are men, with an average age of 33, according to the Sentencing Commission.
U.S. citizens are pulled into smuggling through word of mouth and social media, according to court records, law enforcement officials and researchers, the Post reported.
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