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This is how coyotes cheat on Facebook and this is how this Mexican shepherd fights them

2021-06-11T16:07:11.445Z


El Coyote López offers a "100% safe" ticket to the United States. "They paint a perfect picture of the trip, but I see people when they arrive that sometimes they are dying," says the priest. Even the Border Patrol uses a cruel lie.


By Olivia Solon, Jacob Ward and Aarne Heikkila - NBC News

Pastor Gustavo Banda spends one to three hours a day trying to warn immigrants eager to come to the United States on Facebook not to waste their money on human traffickers who advertise on the social network.

Banda is the director of a shelter in a church in Tijuana, Mexico, where many people deported from the United States end up.

For many,

crossing the border meant giving a lifetime savings to coyotes they contacted on Facebook or the WhatsApp messaging app

.

They promised a safe journey.

But when the migrants arrive at the shelter, they have often lost all their savings and suffered harassment, violence and extortion along the way.

[Crossing the border becomes a lottery: some migrants are returned (and kidnapped), others manage to stay]

"I tell everyone that this is a scam," said the pastor, while pointing to the computer monitor in front of him, where an open Facebook page served as a forum for migrants and coyotes. "If they need help trying to cross They should get a lawyer and do it in a legal way and that I can help them, "he added.

It is a concern shared by the Tech Transparency Project, a research group belonging to the non-profit organization Campain for Accountability.

This body constantly publishes research highlighting the apparent failure of technology companies to effectively police their platforms.

Among other issues, they have presented reports on how Facebook was used to plan the assault on the Capitol in January and the presence of far-right groups on social media such as the far-right group 

Boogaloo

, who promote a new civil war.

Migrants use a gap in the border fence in Arizona to cross into the United States on foot.

June 10, 202100: 24

This week, the group released a report, previously seen exclusively by NBC News, highlighting the

extent to which Facebook and WhatsApp are used to organize human trafficking across the southern border

.

The report details the existence of dozens of groups, some of them with tens of thousands of members, in which human traffickers promoted their services, including prices, phone numbers and videos of previous successful crossings.

Some of the smugglers also have ties to Mexican drug cartels

, the investigation indicates.

[They published on social networks photos and videos of the assault on the Capitol: this is how the FBI is identifying the attackers]

"The biggest concern about these groups on Facebook is that there are people who are in very desperate and vulnerable situations, mixing with people who are part of organized criminal networks, including cartels and gangs," said Katie Paul, Project Director. of Technological Transparency.

"It is a problem that Facebook has known for many years," he

said.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said the company prohibits "content that is offered to facilitate human trafficking."

"We rely on people and technology to remove this content, and we work with NGOs and other interested partners to combat the ways our platform can be used by those who want to harm people. We are constantly evaluating ways to improve our application so that we can more effectively find and remove content that violates our rules, "he added.

Since 2015, researchers and journalists have periodically identified pages dedicated to human trafficking on Facebook.

The company has removed groups that violate its policies when it becomes aware of them.

The Coyote López page

Investigators found that many of the Facebook pages identified in the report worked without hiding.

On a page created in December 2020, called

El Coyote López

, a ticket from Nicaragua to the United States was advertised for $ 8,000.

In the comments section, supposedly satisfied customers left messages of appreciation such as "it's 100% safe."

[They rescue 140 migrants kidnapped in "subhuman conditions" in Ciudad Juárez]

In another group with 44,000 members called

I Want to Cross the Border

, smugglers share videos documenting the trips they have made.

One of the members, who appears in the profile photo with a gun, posted photos of people walking in the desert and scaling what appears to be the border wall.

Nilda García, an investigator who specializes in the activity of Mexican cartels on social media, whom the investigators consulted for their report, said that this member of the group was likely a member of a cartel, according to clues on her Facebook profile, including the weapon he carried and the language he used.

Investigators also identified many publications that promote services to cross into the United States, in which a fee of $ 700 per person is charged, supposedly intended to pay the

right of floor

to the cartels, under the risk of extortion, kidnapping or death in case of not paying, Garcia said.

They record the plea of ​​a migrant child when he was abandoned by coyotes at the border

May 31, 202102: 23

"Mexican cartels are diversifying their criminal activities and taking migrants across the border is very lucrative

," Garcia said, noting that they are taking advantage of the growing demand from migrants.

In his 2020 book entitled

The War on Drugs in Mexico and Criminal Networks

, García tries to show that cartels use social media to promote themselves, recruit members and send messages to their rivals.

Garcia notes that while Facebook remains a key platform for cartels, many now have a larger presence on Instagram, also owned by Facebook, and the video social network TikTok.

She assured that TikTok is the only company that has contacted her for advice on how to remove her cartel-related content.

The power of misinformation

Many posts from human smugglers identified by the Technology Transparency Project spread the misinformation that the Biden Administration has opened the southern border to migrants and that people are more easily obtaining asylum.

But the Administration chaired by Joe Biden has been trying to dispel this type of misinformation in an effort to mitigate the increase in border crossings.

"As one of our priorities, we will discourage illegal migration

," Vice President Kamala Harris said at a press conference in Guatemala earlier this week.

"Don't come. Don't come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border," he added.

It is a message that the State Department has broadcast by radio in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Brazil since the end of January, reported the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki.

The government also worked with Facebook and Instagram on a social media campaign targeting millions of people in the same region with messages to discourage them from traveling to the border.

USCIS announces changes to facilitate immigration procedures.

An expert explains

June 10, 202100: 55

Paul acknowledged that Facebook can also be used to deter people from crossing the border

, but said he remains frustrated that the company has not taken enough action against human smugglers.

Other experts opined that the problem was not with Facebook.

"We need to stop thinking that, in general, social media is to blame," said Gabriela Sánchez, an independent expert hired by Facebook.

[Detentions of migrants at the border break record for the third consecutive month, but the arrival of single children falls again]

For her, the main magnet that draws immigrants to human smugglers is the immigration policy of the United States, in particular, Title 42, an old policy reused by the Trump Administration and maintained by Biden to export migrants without rights. to request asylum, which according to her pushes migrants to seek illegal access routes to the country.

Deported and embezzled

“Yes, it's something that makes me angry,” Pastor Banda said, looking at another group's Facebook page where migrants negotiate with suspected coyotes.

"The coyotes paint a perfect picture of the trip, but I see the people when they arrive and I see the children who are sometimes sick or dying," he added.

Most of the people in her shelter come from Central America: families from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, escaping instability, poverty, the threat of gang recruitment, and violence.

[New immigration policies will make it easier to obtain residency and other visas, USCIS reported]

And most have made at least one prior attempt to cross, usually through Texas, where the border is less strictly patrolled.

After paying thousands of dollars to a coyote to smuggle them in, often all the money they have, they are captured and deported to Mexico.

The shelter has health professionals to treat migrants' psychological trauma, illnesses and injuries, as well as lawyers who take statements to initiate asylum applications.

Although no one at the shelter wanted to give their names,

all those interviewed assured that their first contact with the coyotes had been through Facebook

.

At least five men showed NBC News screenshots from Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp negotiating prices, terms, routes and schedules with their coyotes.

A migrant showed a plan to cross the southern border into McAllen, Texas, for $ 6,000, plus an additional $ 4,000 to travel to Houston.

Another said it cost $ 9,000 for an adult and $ 7,000 for children to get to Los Angeles.

"

We do not give a visa,"

says the message in Spanish.

A Honduran migrant described his precarious situation: After spending four years working in Belize without a legal permit, he saved $ 9,000 that he used to try to cross the border in Texas.

But he was intercepted and deported to Mexico.

Now, without money, he does not know what to do.

He has been in the Banda shelter for 10 days.

When migrants arrive at the shelter,

Banda is often the first person to break the news that they are no longer in the United States.

Migrants at the border desperately asked for help while Kamala Harris and AMLO spoke

June 8, 202 101: 44

He says that Border Patrol agents often tell families captured across the border that they are heading to California, and only when they arrive at this shelter in Baja California, south of the border, do they realize your situation.

"When I tell them 'you're in Mexico, you're not in the United States," Banda said in Spanish, "they start to cry."

Customs and Border Protection officials did not respond to a request for comment.

“We need legal, dignified, and accessible migration paths for people along the US-Mexico border,” the pastor stressed.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2021-06-11

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