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Quetzaltenango, Guatemala – Jose Sica waits impatiently in his small shop, with pink and blue rows of plastic children’s bikes on the floor and untouched phone chargers and screen protectors behind the wall.
Looking at the mere record of sales, Sica feels stuck: “Today, I barely sold two things,” he told Al Jazeera.
The opening of the Quetzaltenan store, one of Guatemala’s largest cities, was the last bet for Sica, having previously spent 14 years working as a security guard in the United States. He was very successful with this business or migrated north again.
with the economic crisis caused by Covid-19 Pandemic still in Central America, and struggling to get his business up and running, Sica has once again begun to wonder how much it would cost to smuggle him into the United States.
But the price has gone up dramatically: when Sica migrated north in 1996, he said, the coyotes … Guides that bring migrants and refugees across borders in exchange for money – He was charged about 25,000 quetzals ($ 3,200). They are currently earning up to 140,000 smokers ($ 18,100), a fortune in a country where about half of the population lives below the poverty line.
The price has risen between the pandemic and the change migration controlsAccording to more than a dozen sources interviewed by Al Jazeera. The already lucrative human smuggling industry has done even more for criminal companies, while migrants suffer the weight of the consequences.
“If I had the money, I would go right now,” Sica said. “The more barriers you create, the higher the price. Now, migration is more difficult, more dangerous and more expensive. ”
Smuggling networks are expanding
Costs have been rising for years as a result of increasing migration barriers in the US and Mexico and the expansion of smuggling networks.
According to Carlos Lopez, director of a migrant shelter in Guatemala City, costs have risen sharply during repressions Trump administration. This was exacerbated by pandemic-related border closures and reduced mobility.
“When the authorities tighten migration policies and controls, the cost of coyotes is almost certain, or as they call it in Mexico, chicken coops“It’s going to go up,” Lopez told Al Jazeera.
Although the restrictions on COVID-19 began to be released, other obstacles remained. “There is poverty, there is corruption, there is abandonment of the state, ”Lopez said. “So there’s a state of emergency that has made the pandemic worse and more spectacular.”
Factors like this have been on the rise lately US-Mexico border From countries like Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Eduardo Jimenez, who is leading a project aimed at providing economic opportunities for Guatemalans not to have to migrate near Quetzaltenango, said that opportunistic smugglers are taking advantage of the situation.
“The ambition of the coyotes is to make a lot more money,” Jimenez told Al Jazeera. “So they take advantage of people’s need to improve their living conditions. And they know that people will find a way to pay; the coyotes are able to raise the price as they wish. ‘
Mafia fighting for control of crossings between Guatemala and Mexico has also increased the level of extortion, and if you don’t pay, “you risk dying mercilessly,” Jimenez said.
Although migrant caravans were a way to prevent such exploitation, the alternative has become “more feasible” as Mexican authorities have worked hard. break the caravans, Jessica Bolter, an analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, told Al Jazeera.
Worldwide, criminal companies raised $ 5.5 billion and $ 7 billion in human trafficking in 2016. according to United Nations report. To pay off, migrants take out large loans or borrow money from family or friends who have already migrated. They sometimes turn to predatory loans, which charge interest rates of 10 to 20 percent per month. Migrants often place the only value their family has as collateral: housing.
If they do not pay their debts – and this can happen if they are detained on a trip, or deported to the United States before earning enough money – they and their families may be left with nothing.
‘Why did this happen to me?’
Aracely Vail, 26, decided to move to the United States when she obtained a loan from a relative of her husband, who had migrated seven years earlier. She left her eight-year-old daughter behind to reunite with her husband in Maryland, and to earn enough money to educate her daughter.
Coyotes have used their perception of the US President Joe BidenBorder policies are more flexible than those of former President Donald Trump to persuade people to migrate, making it safe to travel safely.
Vail said he figured that way, and agreed with a human smuggler that the price was 135,000 quetzals ($ 17,500). They had previously agreed to pay 35,000 quetzals ($ 4,500) and the rest when they reached the limit. “He told me the trip would be easy,” Vail told Al Jazeera. “He told me so many different things, and the journey was not like that. It’s just a matter of telling people. “
After walking more than 18 hours through the Mexican desert, Vail said he was abandoned by smugglers before crossing the U.S.-Mexico border after his group was pursued by U.S. border agents. He was arrested and deported to his small town in Guatemala.
“I asked God, ‘Why? Why did this happen to me?'” I said.
Today, she is sitting in her small two-bedroom house with her daughter playing with plastic dolls behind her. Speaking of which, she sews brightly on traditional indigenous clothing, explaining that she earns some money from her work.
But her husband is in debt to her husband in the United States.
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