FOR the human smugglers who ferry migrants northwards from Central America, the return of Donald Trump is a welcome New Year gift that promises to supercharge their business.
"Bless Donald Trump for winning," said one people smuggler, who talked on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from Mexico's authorities as well as its drug cartels.
"We're eagerly waiting for Jan 20 to be back in business and start earning some more dollars," said the 45-year-old, who has spent the past six years transporting undocumented migrants, most from Central America and the Caribbean, to the United States.
Now he is banking on a pickup in trade due to Trump's campaign promise to crack down on migrants once he takes office on Jan 20, vowing to lengthen the border wall to keep migrants out and enforce mass deportations of those who have made it.
Like thousands of other smugglers, he is hoping to cash in big time from Trump's return, expecting an increase of at least US$2,000 in profits per person.
Smugglers, or coyotes as they are called locally, are also tapping into a rising sense of panic among migrants, many of whom are fleeing deepening violence and poverty, fearing it will become harder to gain asylum under a second Trump presidency.
Even before Trump won re-election, smugglers were peddling disinformation and scams on social media, telling migrants to make it to the southern US border before Trump takes office as his presidency will make it harder to cross.
In recent years, the father of three said he had ferried about 30 people a week to the United States, be it young men or families with children, charging at least US$5,000 a head for passage to a new life by plane, bus or car.
His business comes from word-of-mouth recommendations from families who have made it to the US, and the smuggler said he also connects migrants with a series of safe houses where they can eat, sleep and use the Internet.
This past year, he said, business was down 80 per cent after the US Customs and Border Protection (CBB) agency set up an app that let migrants make their asylum claim at the border.
Instead of hiring a smuggler to get them across, migrants instead waited at the border in Mexico for an appointment, even if it meant living several months in areas rife with crime.
Last year, there were 1,450 appointments available a day on the CBP One app.
But as Trump has vowed to get rid of the app, effectively closing the main legal option for people seeking asylum, this will likely raise demand for smuggler services.
"They say they will close the border, but we always find a hole to sneak people through.
"They can't close the entire border, it's impossible," said the smuggler.
The coyote said he had a near-100 per cent success rate by scaling the wall in areas controlled by cartels.
On the US side, he then drives the migrants to their chosen destination.
Trump is expected to declare illegal immigration a national emergency on taking office, pulling resources from across the government to crack down on both legal and illegal immigration.
Yet tightening the restrictions does not dissuade people from migrating, said Maureen Meyer with the Washington Office on Latin America (Wola), a human rights advocacy group.
"Increased enforcement does very little to decrease migration flows to the United States. What it does is feed profits into organised criminal groups," said Meyer, Wola's vice-president for programmes.
According to 2017 estimates by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, human trafficking to the US earns criminal groups up to US$4.2 billion a year.
Smugglers also pay corrupt officials so they can get through checkpoints expressly set up to catch migrants, the coyote said.
Cartel violence is especially fierce in Chiapas state in southern Mexico, a key crossing point for migrants heading north from Central America or from as far as the Darien Gap, a perilous stretch of rainforest straddling Colombia and Panama.
Every child and adult pays 1,200 pesos to the cartel just for the right to cross the river that divides Mexico and Guate-mala.
Whoever refuses to pay — migrant and smugglers alike — runs a high risk of kidnap or murder.
*The writer is from Reuters
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times