re: likely paid drug lords money to get here,
Where is your evidence? The #1 way Mexican illegals come here is legally as tourists, students, special work programs, etc. Then their situation expires.
Probably the #2 way is to rent an ID for $5 from a family owned small business and walk across the border at rush hour when it is impossible to check the IDs.
Probably the #3 way is for family members and close friends from their hometown doing a variation of #2 as they all look alike on an ID.
Drug lords do smuggle illegal across. But there is much more money in drugs than in competing with the above.
Legals hate illegals
When I was in college, overstaying student visas was a preferred method of remaining illegally, and it srtill was when my cub was in college-the visa expired awhile after graduation, so all you had to do was graduate, disappear into the population of a large city before the date you had to report to la migra, find an employer who didn’t ask too many questions who was impressed with you and your education, and you might never, ever be caught-I doubt that has changed much...
I turned in a college classmate planning to do what I just described because not only was she giving all of us Latinos a bad name, but I couldn’t stand the whiny drama queen anyway-she got deported within a week...