Smuggled across the US southern border

The New York Times has a very good story on what it took for a young Salvadoran man to escape violence in San Miguel for the unknown of the United States in What It Costs to Be Smuggled
Across the U.S. Border.

Mr. Cruz’s story provides an unusually detailed anatomy of the price of the journey. The money paid for a network of drivers who concealed him in tractor-trailers and minibuses, a series of houses where he hid out, handlers tied to criminal organizations who arranged his passage, and bribes for Mexican police officers to look the other way as he passed.

Even with his family’s payment, he slept amid filth and vermin. He watched guides abandon some migrants who could not keep up, and guards prod others to become drug mules. Sometimes the smugglers identified him by a numeric code, other times by an assumed name. But as often as not, they simply called him “the package,” to be moved for profit like an illicit good.

For Mr. Cruz, it was worth it. “They can build as many walls as they want,” he said, referring to American officials. “They can send as many soldiers to the border as they want, but a people’s need and desire for a better life is stronger.”

I imagine that President Trump's decision to separate families and now to detain them together, will deter some migrants from making the trip to the United States. The same goes for adding additional miles of walls along the border. It's not going to stop migration but it will probably reduce it, at least temporarily.

What is more likely it that is will make the passage more expensive and dangerous. People will die as they are forced to go deeper into the desert or cross more dangerous areas of the river. Smugglers, coyotes, organized criminal networks, and corrupt state officials will be the ones who profit. They always do. In addition, private companies who win the contracts to build infrastructure and imprison and/or track migrants. We have an immoral policy focused on deterring poor and vulnerable people from finding safety that is likely to get worse if the president has his way.   

The New York Times article is well worth the read.