Hathaway says that his friend’s family in Tijuana was moving at least 100 Mexicans across the border every month. “It was a family business, basically,” Hathaway says.
“They were pretty much like slaves until they’d pay off the money,” he adds. “And that’s how they talked about them. They’d say they owned these people if they couldn’t pay. And they’d keep them in these houses over here for months at a time if they couldn’t pay. Or the people over here would put up the money, but if they couldn’t pay right away, then they’d keep the people and make them work it off. It was $2000 to bring each one across.”
How They Get Across
“Since 1994, which is when Operation Gatekeeper began, it has become more difficult to cross the border,” says Rick Madueno. Madueno, 46, owns and operates Defense Investigative Agency. He interviews witnesses, evaluates crime scenes, develops theories, and coordinates with experts in the quest to discover what really happened when a crime has been committed.
“Back then,” Madueno says, “the fee was $300, which would be $100 for the guy who crosses you and then $200 for the guy that would drive you all the way to Los Angeles or other areas. Now the fee is anywhere from $1500 to $3500. And the fee depends on how you get crossed. You know, are you going to be walking through the pedestrian lanes at the port of entry with fake documents, or using stolen documents and you have a likeness to the person? Or are you going to climb the hills and run through the desert with a guide and then get picked up in a vehicle miles and miles inland? Or will you agree to be put into the trunk of a car to go through the port of entry?”
Madueno doesn’t use the term “coyote” to refer to people smugglers. “ ‘Coyote’ is a word that used to be used in the past,” Madueno says. “Now, pollero is the more popular word, because the illegals are called pollos, which is chickens. And a pollero is the one who carries or has pollos. And so, the lingo among the smugglers is, you know, ‘How many pollos do you have?’ It’s a trading game.”
Madueno’s worked on human-smuggling cases for over 13 years. “A lot of times they have recruiters in Mexico,” he says, “and they’ll be at a train station or a bus depot, and they’ll be asking you, ‘Do you want to go to the United States?’ And they gather all these people, the recruiters do, and then they go and sell them to the polleros, to the people who actually have an operation going to get them across. From there, you have your once-in-a-while kind-of pollero who does it only when he’s strapped for money, and then you have the organizations that have the whole network, from the recruiters to the guides to the drivers on this side of the border to the people who keep stash houses for piling up people so that when they have to go to L.A., they take as many as possible, to save on fuel and risk. Because you have checkpoints to go through. And they have spotters who drive up and down the checkpoint areas to see if they’re on or off, and then they relay that information to the drivers.”
“There’s a definite network, here as well as there,” defense attorney Don Levine explains. Levine, 55, has been doing federal alien-smuggling cases since 1985. Levine estimates that he’s defended at least 100 coyotes over the years. “The smugglers have operatives in, probably, I would guess, every major city in the United States. And they’re independent contractors, essentially. And they get a cut of the action for every illegal. You know, the drivers typically get $50 to $100 a head to drive them from point A to point B, and then another driver gets another amount to drive from point B to point C, and so on.”
Levine cocks his head as he talks, and it comes across as sincerity. Levine has graying hair, a graying beard and mustache, and a round face. He rolls up the sleeves of his red oxford shirt and carries a black leather bag full of files and papers.
“What happens is, you get all of these Mexican citizens that want to be brought across,” Levine goes on. “They don’t know how to do it. They come from the interior of Mexico, and they get to Tijuana or thereabouts, and they ask around, and that’s where your coyotes have runners and people that work for them to drum up business. So then the illegal alien is told, okay, so we’ll meet tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. at this park over here, or something. And they show up, and typically they’ll have a vehicle that’s been altered in some way.”
And how do they alter these vehicles?
“I remember one case where they actually did a type of bed on top of the engine,” Levine explains. “Basically just a steel plate on top of the engine. And they put a very tiny Hispanic lady in the engine compartment of a moving vehicle, if you can believe that. And I’ve seen a lot of cases where they stack people like cordwood in the back of a van. And many where they just shove as many as possible in the trunk. But the typical sort of thing is they build a compartment right next to or on top of the gas tank. And they run a rubber air hose from the compartment, and they will literally bolt the people in, so that it’s like a metal coffin. And some of these compartments are so tiny, if you were claustrophobic, you’d go nuts.”
Levine says the coyotes — polleros — often target minors to drive the altered vehicles because they know it’s difficult to prosecute minors in the United States.
“And then there’s also a lot of people that just make a run for it,” Levine says. “Over the fence, under the fence, around here, around there, and they don’t even pay a smuggler. But most of them, the way it works, they don’t pay any money up front. They agree to pay, and I think the going rate now is $3500. And the agreement is, there will be a series of transports to get them to wherever they’re going — Los Angeles, Michigan, Chicago. And they agree upon the amount, and if the family doesn’t come up with the money, I’ve actually seen smugglers go and kidnap the illegal alien and hold him for ransom. But that’s typically how it is, where the illegal alien doesn’t pay any money up front. Instead, they start working and making monthly payments.”