Human smuggling

New Interpol-Led Human Smuggling Operation Arrests Some 'Linked to Terrorism', Collects Trove of Intel

As I have reported from my recent investigations of "extra-continental" migration through the choke-point countries of Panama and Costa Rica, the governments there have essentially taken over the job of human smugglers. The governments, as a matter of policy, are systematically moving mostly young men of unverified identity and backgrounds from places like the Middle East, Pakistan, and Somalia through their territories toward the U.S. southern border. This "we'll-help-you-just-move-along" policy even has a name: "controlled flow". And it maintains this part of a smuggling bridge that connects distant countries of terrorism concern to the U.S. southern border. But that's just in Panama and Costa Rica.

One of my recent video reports from Costa Rica shows that illicit smuggling networks still operate despite controlled flow because smugglers find it in their financial interest to convince migrants that the governments mean to do them harm if they join official caravans in the open, and some migrants have backgrounds they'd rather not advertise.

There and pretty much everywhere else in Latin America, cross-border migration and the smuggling that facilitates it remains pretty much illicit, even if government corruption and indifference provide the smugglers with relative leeway.

With a new Interpol-led smuggling crackdown known as "Operation Andes", which netted 49 human smugglers who funneled people into Panama and out of Costa Rica and took place in late November, just ahead of my trip to both countries, smugglers of special interest migrants of terrorism concern probably are at least considering other career options.