For some cartels, human smuggling has taken priority over drugs ( Mexico )

Dallas Morning News ^ | 29 August 2014 | ALFREDO CORCHADO

[george76]

With recent waves of Central Americans seeking to reach the U.S., human smuggling along the Texas border has, at least for the moment, become more lucrative than smuggling illicit drugs for criminal organizations such as the Gulf and Zetas cartels, according to two U.S. intelligence officials.

U.S. agents tracking the money flow as part of the anti-smuggling Operation Coyote say that in just over six months, human smuggling has generated nearly $50 million, mostly in the area around the Mexican border city of Reynosa. The revenue has helped sustain the Gulf cartel during a bloody internal split, the officials said. Some factions of the Gulf cartel are now working with the Sinaloa cartel, they said, and another faction has joined forces with the Zetas, increasing violence and making the situation along the border more perilous.

“I’m not suggesting that the cartels have abandoned their drug-smuggling activities,” said Oscar Hagelsieb, assistant special agent-in-charge of Homeland Security Investigations in El Paso. “But with all the money to be made in human smuggling, they clamped their claws into it as well. Big time.

[cripplecreek]

Well duh. They were always about the money and the product never mattered.

Cut off the human smuggling and they’ll find something else to smuggle or someone else to extort.

[Born to Conserve]

They’re using the illegals to swamp the system so they can smuggle drugs more easily.

[george76]

Never letting a crisis go to waste.

Also helps more Muslim terrorists to sneak in.

[no-to-illegals]

by George you understand. Was a planned, executed military maneuver on the part of the cartels to distract (with young and children) while the purposeful smuggling of humans ranging in age low 20s early 30s went undetected.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

From THE WALKING HILLS. "You could make good money smuggling in Chinese back in those days."

[Graewoulf]

These Mexican Cartels certainly have become wealthy by the illicit human smuggling of the Illegal Obama Wetbacks.

[CedarDave]

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