Refrigerated trucks full of undocumented migrants, groups of people abandoned to their fate in the desert or a woman trafficked and sexually exploited. The horror stories of so many people who cross the United States border without papers are varied, but many, perhaps most, have one factor in common: a trafficker—the coyote, the pollero—who “facilitates” entry into the country. . To identify and arrest the leaders of the mafias behind it, the Department of Justice, with the collaboration of the Department of Homeland Security, created a specialized working group called Alpha in 2021. The special investigation group against trafficking in persons of the United States Government has taken stock of its three years of existence and its numbers show a 25% increase in arrests. “If this were a business we would say that it has had exceptional growth. The group is doing impactful work,” says James Hepburn, co-director of the program.
Although they recognize that they are still in the early stages and with many investigations underway, those responsible boast of having achieved more than 300 national and international arrests, with 242 convictions at the national level and 175 defendants who have received a sentence. The special task force has operated since its conception with the objective of arresting those responsible for human trafficking operating in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. Five federal offices on the southern border are collaborating in the investigations, including California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
In addition to arresting those responsible for the networks, the group aims to prevent the emergence of new cases, which they try to achieve with greater penalties than usual. If sentences for human trafficking are normally set between four and ten months in prison, the sentences in the cases handled by Alpha reach 405 months.
Those responsible defend the imposition of higher sentences as a deterrent measure. “We don’t want them to continue operating with impunity,” says Ian Hanna, co-director of Alpha. To increase the penalties, aggravating factors are taken into account, such as transporting more than 100 people, death, or trafficking of unaccompanied minors.
The group’s innovation, its leaders point out, is to go after the leaders of these organizations, not only in the United States, but also abroad. “If there is a connection with the United States we are going to investigate, we are going to proceed and with our partners abroad we are going to extradite them,” says Hanna.
The choice of cases to investigate comes in two ways. On the one hand, it reactivates it when a tragedy occurs, such as an accident involving a trailer that transports people illegally. On the other hand, the proactive one, which focuses on the information collected by the collaborating countries and that in many cases arrives through social networks.
Alpha’s balance came a day after President Joe Biden signed an executive order that closes the border to migrants after passing the barrier of 2,500 illegal crossings per day. Hanna stated that it is his “hope” that the decree will curb human trafficking, but he was skeptical that it would be eliminated. He also indicated that all Mexican cartels have some relationship with the illicit movement of people, with migrant trafficking, but not so much with human trafficking, which implies that there is a purpose of labor or sexual exploitation.
Those responsible for Alpha, however, stressed that the group does not deal with migrants who cross the border illegally, since its target is the leaders of the mafias that traffic with them.
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