Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies has a story posted today on CIS.org that is both fascinating and deeply troubling. Titled “A United Nations of Mass Illegal Immigration: The U.S. migration crisis in plain view at the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border,” the article recounts his recent experience at a Costa Rica/Nicaragua border crossing near Los Chiles, Costa Rica.
There Bensman witnessed three illegal Haitian migrants paying a couple of Nicaraguan soldiers to get them across into that country and continue the way north, toward the United States. The incident illustrates what Bensman calls a “vast new bonanza” available to the criminal and the corrupt on an huge illegal pathway linking South America with the U.S., always the illegal migrants’ final destination.
According to Bensman, that “underground railroad” is congested these days not just with Haitians but natives of “Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Russia, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and dozens of other countries,” more than 140 in all, forming what he calls a “UN of Illegal Migration.”
Bensman interviewed one smuggler named Luis he found in Los Chiles “on a public street trying to sell passage to three Senegalese.” Luis told him that “everyone in town had been suffering from the effects of Trump’s deterrence-based border policies. This, he said, heavily damaged the local economy. But everyone has been catching up on the money-making ‘since this president [Joe Biden], and since Trump was not in office.'”
“Since Trump left, we started seeing this large horde of people,” Luis explained. “They tell me they’re giving out papers to everyone … Venezuelans, Cubans — everyone! They say they’re going to the U.S. to work. The border was too tight before.”
Apparently, not any more.
For more on this disturbing story, see CIS.org.