Mexico's New Generation Of Human Smugglers

With record numbers of migrants, younger "polleros" are running a more dangerous racket

Working in Ciudad Juárez with Miguel and Luis Perea

It wasn’t tough to find the human smugglers, known as polleros or “chicken herders,” at work in the Anapra slum that sprawls to the northwest of Ciudad Juárez over the border from Sunland Park in New Mexico. While the famous border “wall” (really a reinforced steel fence) cuts hard against the cluster of ramshackle homes, it stops abruptly before a dusty hill that leads up to the Mount Cristo Rey on the U.S side. Smugglers commonly use this gap as a crossing point and sure enough on a sun-drenched afternoon, we find polleros guiding a group of migrants, who they refer to as pollos or chickens, into the United States.

This a very different environment from downtown Ciudad Juárez where large numbers of asylum seekers cross through razor wire to hand themselves into the Border Patrol in El Paso. Here the migrants travel in small groups with smugglers who charge them thousands of dollars a head and they attempt to make it through the desert undetected. It’s treacherous terrain that has seen record numbers of migrants dying, often from dehydration.

I’m with an old friend and photographer Miguel Perea and his grandson and field producer Luis, and we walk up to one of the smugglers to say we are journalists. The pollero is perhaps eighteen years old, skinny in a red t-shirt with a shiny Santa Muerte figurine round his neck. A colleague told me the smugglers were banning journalists from the area. But we enthusiastically shake his hand and say we are just going to take pictures of the wall and he reluctantly lets us stay.

“Están unos periodistas” - “There are some journalists here” - he says on his phone in the slurred tone of the local youths, presumably to his boss. We take some videos but after ten minutes, he waves us to move on.

We drive out to the highway and cruise along more border wall through the Chihuahuan Desert. As cars and trucks roll by, we spot a man hung on top of the fence, appearing to check if the coast is clear. We do a U-Turn and I film the video below from the other side of the road as a group of migrants appear and scale the wall using steel rods. The pollero, seen in the blue baseball cap, spots us and yells.

We speed away only to see yet another group of migrants crossing, this time with a rope ladder. I film the second video below, but a big pick up truck comes menacingly behind us and follows us down the road until we drive back into Ciudad Juárez.

As U.S. border agents detain record numbers of migrants and asylum seekers, with 2.5 million “encounters” in fiscal year 2023, human smugglers are enjoying a booming business. But the profits also drive conflict inside the Juarez Cartel and its various armed factions and affiliate gangs. The smuggling groups of Anapra, including many teenagers like we saw, have come up against the veteran drug traffickers and O.G. gang bangers in downtown Ciudad Juárez.

The emergent smuggling gangs, with their many teenage operatives, can be more reckless and pursue more dangerous practices than the veteran “coyotes” who used to dominate the trade. The sheer number of migrants crossing also makes conditions more hazardous.

Smugglers stash migrants in crowded houses with over 100, sometimes even over 200 people, and can fail to give them enough food or water. Sometimes, the polleros guide migrants effectively through the desert to a waiting vehicle and get them safely to their destinations in cities across the United States. But other times, they abandon their “customers” to walk alone and get lost, be bitten by snakes or perish under the torturous sun.

As Lauren Villagran reports in the El Paso Times, the number of migrant deaths in the El Paso sector has rocketed from six in 2018 to a record 149 for the last fiscal year. The desert hills of Sunland Park and neighboring Santa Teresa are by far the most perilous areas.

Furthermore, along the whole 2,000 mile border, migrant deaths reached a record 895 in 2022, making it the most deadly border on the planet. (The count for 2023 hasn’t been released yet, which is ominous). And the aid group No More Deaths claims officials under-count the victims.

There are various factors driving the death toll. The sheer number of migrants means more fatalities. Temperatures have been punishing. More razor wire and troops push migrants onto more hazardous routes.

But the practices of the smugglers certainly contribute to the tragic tally. Bodies are found decaying in the desert of people who didn’t have enough water. Smugglers can leave migrants to walk a fairly short distance to a road, but without a guide it’s easy to go in circles round the rocky terrain. Some fall climbing over the fence. Some perish in cramped vehicles, including 53 who died in a tractor trailer found near Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio in 2022.

The fighting within the Juarez Cartel has also driven a new spike in murders and bodies hanging from bridges. This battle has spilled into the Texas prisons, where a crew including several young men on human smuggling charges beat to death an older Barrio Azteca member and left him in his cell with his head in a blood-soaked trash bag.

From Squatter Settlement To Smuggling Stronghold

Anapra grew in the eighties and nineties as thousands arrived from across Mexico to squat land and built homes of wooden pallets, corrugated iron sheets and cardboard. Now many residents have remade their houses with concrete and breeze blocks, following the classic evolution from shanty town to urban slum. And amid the dirt streets, a few big fortified buildings stand out, which locals say are used to stash large numbers of migrants waiting to cross.

Coverage of the migrant trail through Mexico tends to focus heavily on asylum seekers. One reason is that it’s easy to find and talk to such voyagers who are often in hostels and camps in the town centers. But there are many migrants who are paying human smugglers and are kept out of sight in safe houses in areas like Anapra.

In the next video below, I show the part of Anapra next to the border where we first found the polleros and the gap in the fence next to the hill.

Subscribe for a special offer of $5 to read the full story with more videos. You also get full access to the CrashOut archive, including interviews with active cartel members and maps of cartel territory. Thanks for supporting true independent journalism on these crucial issues.