Cartel members prey on vulnerable migrants desperate to get to America, viewing them as products they can exploit for money or sex, directors from two El Paso nonprofits told Fox News.
"When [migrants] travel through, there's a lot of cartels, a lot of mafia that they encounter that take advantage of them, who don't see them as people, but see them as products to be moved and profit from," Nicole Reulet, director of marketing at the Rescue Mission of El Paso said. "It really is a humanitarian crisis."
"It's much bigger than downtown El Paso," she added. "It's much bigger than the rescue mission. It's much bigger than Texas. It's a nationwide problem."
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John Martin, the director of the Opportunity Center for the Homeless in El Paso, has also witnessed the crisis.
"There are individuals that prey on the most vulnerable," he said. "That's what needs to be avoided."
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The cartels' lucrative operations smuggling migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border has skyrocketed in recent years. The illicit industry raked in $13 billion as of July 2022 — up from $500 million in 2018, according to Homeland Security Investigations.
The cartels have taken advantage of desperate migrants, increasing fees during their perilous journeys through extortion, the nonprofit directors said. If the migrants can't afford the cost, some have been forced to traffic drugs or work off their debts to the cartel in other ways.
"If you can't pay that price, you get killed or someone gets ransomed," Reulet said.
Many migrants who have stayed at Reulet's shelters traveled through the Darién Gap, a perilous 66-mile stretch in Panama. One migrant told Reulet he started the portion with a group of 900, but ended with 400.
"That jungle is essentially just a big graveyard," Reulet said. "A lot can go wrong in there, and it's mostly run by the cartel."
Some cartel members have killed, raped or assaulted migrants during the journey through the Darién Gap, Reulet said. A migrant showed her a video of her family members being killed with machetes.
"It was just so horrific, but that's normal for migrants passing through," Reulet said. "There's a lot of kids who have seen their parents either killed or raped in front of them. There's a huge psychological factor in that."
One human trafficking victim, Karla Jacinto, previously told Fox News she was raped more than 40,000 times over four years in Mexico.
"These migrants are very traumatized and have incredible trust issues," Reulet said. "So for them to get into a white van to come to a shelter takes a lot of trust for them, and that's how desperate they are. They have to nitpick every decision they make because they're very unsure and very vulnerable because of what they've been through."
Aside from the cartels' brutality and abuse, the journey itself also poses dangers to migrants.
"There's so much that people have sacrificed to come here," Reulet said. "They've sacrificed months, sacrificed limbs, sometimes lives. There's a lot of people who were trying to get here who don't make it."
In the first seven months of 2023, migrants crossings through the Darién Gap reached a new record, with nearly 250,000 migrants so far, according to Panamanian officials.
The Biden administration has pointed to a sharp drop in migrant encounters since Title 42 ended, with under 145,000 migrant encounters in June, compared to nearly 208,000 in June last year. But those ticked back up in July, leading the Biden administration to send more Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents to the southern border.
The two nonprofit directors said their have shelters remained at or over capacity, even during the dip in crossings.
"The migration issue that we're seeing at the southern border is a national issue," Martin said. "Communities like El Paso that are along the border … we just happen to be at the front door step."
Martin told Fox News he has a "gut feeling" the country could be on the edge of another crisis at the southern border.
"The solution has to be a national focus," he said. "We need other communities to step up."
To hear more from El Paso shelter directors, click here.
