Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged inTrump-era border closure helped fuel surge in human smugglingSan Antonio Fire Chief Describes 'Piles of Bodies' in Trailer After 46 Dead FindOn June 27, authorities discovered an abandoned trailer outside San Antonio, Texas, filled with dead people from Mexico and Central America.Fifty-three migrants ended up dying in the tragedy.It was the worst such incident in US history, and a sign of how things have changed on the US border in recent years: cross-border human smuggling has gone from being a splintered business of petty criminals to a $13 billion-a-year company controlled by organized crime, according to the Department of Homeland Security.The San Antonio incident presented all the signs of the new human smuggling regime.The immigrants in the truck came from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, according to their respective governments.Many paid between $3,000 and $8,500 to the Northeast Cartel, an organized crime group, for transportation from the Mexican cities of Camargo and Nuevo Laredo to an arrival point in San Antonio, VICE News reports, citing two people directly familiar with the deal.The smugglers promised the migrants and their families a "three-month guarantee" and "three months of attempts," according to WhatsApp chat records.Authorities believe the group was then put into a truck with a "cloned" identification number matching that of a real trucking company, held at a US-based safe house, and driven through from a US Border Patrol checkpoint in Laredo, Texas, without incident, before dropping the group off in San Antonio.The smuggling business has exploded in recent years as numerous structural factors, from poverty to climate change to gang violence, push migrants north, even as the United States has increasingly toughened the access to their immigration system, especially during the pandemic.According to government figures, more than 5,046 people were arrested for smuggling last year, almost twice as many as in 2014. The smuggling business now generates $13 billion a year, up from $500 million in 2018, as Drug cartels have taken control of contraband from the independent “coyotes” who used to guide groups across the border.The smuggling business has become especially lucrative during the pandemic thanks to policies like the Title 42 public health directive, a Trump-era order that authorizes border officials to turn away most border crossers immediately. under the pretext of the pandemic.The Biden administration has sought to end this policy, which critics say denies immigrants their legally protected asylum-seeking rights, but the White House has been stymied by federal court rulings.As a result, migrants crossing the border often make repeated attempts to enter the United States, creating even more demand for smugglers.Until these motivating factors are gone, immigrants will continue to come to the United States, according to immigration experts.“There is never going to be a point of militarization that the United States can take the border to that completely stops all these flows,” Jessica Bolter of the Migration Policy Institute told The Independent."The environmental and security factors that are driving people to leave, as well as the economic factors, especially during and after the pandemic...there are always going to be reasons to emigrate."This has prompted groups like the Gulf of Mexico Cartel to step in, bringing ruthless efficiency to an already dangerous business for the migrants involved.Leveraging cartel resources, smugglers now use ID bracelets, secret warehouses and WhatsApp to move people and hold migrants for ransom over great distances.“They are organizing the trade in a way that could not be imagined five or 10 years ago,” Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a human smuggling expert at George Mason University, told The New York Times.Mexican Teofilo Valencia told the Associated Press that he took out a loan, leaving his family's house as collateral to pay US$10,000 to smugglers to bring his two teenage sons to the United States, before they died in the tragedy of San Antonio.Even with the rise of human smuggling as big business, there is no guarantee of safe passage for migrants seeking a better life in the United States.If relatives cannot pay the smugglers in full, migrants may be held in hiding places and subjected to torture and sexual violence.Those who do manage to be transported successfully often face the same kind of harrowing conditions as the deceased migrants in San Antonio.In March, border agents near El Paso found 34 migrants hiding in two unventilated shipping containers.A month later, officials found 24 captives in a hideout.The Biden administration has slowly tried to reverse some of the Trump administration's hard-line immigration policies, scoring a major victory in June when the Supreme Court allowed the White House to rescind the so-called "Remain in Mexico" policy for asylum seekers.Registration is a free and easy 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