Human traffickers with connections to the cartel are employing a quicker and less expensive method to transport migrants, mostly from Haiti, from Mexico City to the border city of Reynosa. Smugglers are able to employ low-cost aircraft rather than ground transit by taking advantage of a bureaucratic weakness and occasionally dishonest immigration inspectors.
In an effort to understand the inner workings of the new route, Breitbart Texas spent several weeks traveling around Mexico interviewing migrants and representatives of the National Migration Institute (INM). The trip starts in Tapachula, Chiapas, where Haitians are able to enter lawfully and request refuge.
Corruption at the INM allows anyone to pay $3,000 for a humanitarian ID that gives migrant workers sanctuary in Mexico. After three months in Chiapas under the supervision of the federal refugee agency COMAR, they are also eligible to get one.
Along with the ID, migrants also receive or can buy a CURP, which is the equivalent of a Mexican Social Security number. A senior INM officer in Tamaulipas told Breitbart Texas that the CURP even contains a photo in the case of migrants from Haiti and Cuba.
Since deportation flights to Haiti are now suspended, an INM officer told Breitbart Texas that when a Haitian is found in the country without the right documentation, they are issued a 20-day authorization to depart the country.
The officer replied, “That permit enables them to move around freely across Mexico for 20 days.”
Migrants are then brought to Mexico City’s airport where they purchase a one-way ticket on Viva Aerobus to Reynosa, a low-cost airline, where the ticket costs, on average, $60 USD. They may do this using legitimately acquired IDs or ones that were illegally procured.
Breitbart Texas was able to record the significant number of Haitian migrants traveling to the northern border city through many journeys from Mexico City to Reynosa. Regardless of the situation, immigrants are allowed to pass immigration inspections as long as they have a legal document.
According to law enforcement sources, the Haitians typically congregate in bunches outside the airport while they wait on cartel-operated passenger vans or Suburbans. Before they can be transported into Texas, migrants are relocated to hotels or stash homes. The Mexican asylum paperwork are thrown away before the migrants cross the Rio Grande, an INM employee told Breitbart Texas.
