Mexican cartels ramp up human smuggling business

Recent waves of Central American immigrants arriving illegally in the U.S. have made human smuggling at least temporarily more lucrative for Mexican drug cartels, according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agent. Oscar Hagelsieb, assistant special agent charge of the department’s investigations unit in El Paso, told The Dallas Morning News (http://bit.ly/VY6fpN) for a Saturday report that the Gulf cartel and others in the region have “clamped their claws” into human smuggling, without abandoning their drug smuggling activities. “We’ve been able to trace millions of dollars going into the Reynosa area. You cannot operate a criminal venture of that magnitude without the cartels having a major role in it,” Hagelsieb said. Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, associate professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville, says new groups could also get involved in human smuggling, which she said has “become much more profitable.”...more