Women Are the New Coyotes

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Editor’s Note: Women are active participants, and often the masterminds, behind the world’s third most lucrative illegal activity, after drugs and weapons: people smuggling. In a four-part investigative series for the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión, reporter Claudia Núñez uncovers the lives of women involved in the human trafficking business in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California.

“Gaviota” (not her real name) has six phones that don’t stop ringing. Her booming business produces net profits of more than $50,000 a month. She has dozens of customers lining up for her in a datebook stretching three months ahead.

Gaviota is not exactly a college-educated professional, much less a businesswoman in a legal enterprise. But she has found "coyotaje" (illegal human trafficking) to be her best option of keeping the promise she tearfully made to her two children: "As long as they don’t kill me, you won’t live in poverty."

Gaviota is one of dozens of women along the southern border of the United States who are active participants and, often, the masterminds behind the world’s third most lucrative illegal industry, after drugs and weapons: human trafficking.

Experts, authorities and the smugglers themselves agree that human trafficking networks are entering a new era, in which women have ceased to be the victims – smuggled across the border and often raped along the journey – and have become the ones that pull the strings in smuggling people ("goats," "chickens" or "furniture,” as they call the undocumented).

"The old story of the man who runs the ‘coyotaje’ business is now just a myth. It’s finally coming out that the big business of human trafficking is in female hands. As long as they make it known that they are women, they have lots of business all along the border," explains Marissa Ugarte, a psychologist, lecturer and founder of the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition of San Diego, Calif.

In 2006, some 3,455 women were arrested for smuggling undocumented immigrants along the southern border, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). So far in 2007, another 1,606 women have been caught.

La Opinión - Read Full Text

That was an eye opener.