Among the local businesses that work with coyotes are transport companies, motels, food caterers, clothing shops and grocery stores.
Guatemala’s shadowy human smuggling network is run by a highly sophisticated organization that more closely resembles a corporation with a profit-sharing program than a ragtag band of criminals.
“Coyotes” — the term often used to describe human smugglers — own first-class Guatemalan hotels, run a sales force with members called “hooks,” and like other businesses, adjust prices up or down depending on competition. They even can provide VIP bus service to the U.S. border.
Coyotes credit President Obama for giving them a new “business model” that allows them to transport unaccompanied minors to the U.S. border with Mexico, then safely turn around and pocket big profits.
Those are the surprising assertions of “Juan,” a coyote chieftain who consented to an interview with the Washington Examiner earlier this month in the rough-and-tumble western Guatemalan district of Huehuetenango.
In the shadowy world of human smuggling, verifying such claims is extremely difficult. His credentials were validated for the Examiner by a Guatemalan Ministry of Justice employee and a former Guatemalan judicial official. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.
Based on a two-and-a-half-hour interview with Juan, dozens of present and former government officials and parents who have used coyotes, it is clear that the human smuggling business resembles, in some respects, legal enterprises like McDonald’s and Mazda.
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