When authorities found Stephen Marroquin-Mendez, the Salvadoran illegal immigrant was stuffed inside a cabinet in the cab of a semi truck, latched from the outside so he couldn’t have freed himself.
He told Homeland Security agents last week he’d already paid $8,500 to be floated across the Rio Grande and into Texas, owed $8,500 more once he reached Houston and would then head to Virginia, where he was to meet up with an aunt already living there.
His eye-popping $17,000 price tag has become standard under President Trump, as smuggling cartels adapt to the border shutdown by raising the prices they charge illegal immigrants.
Mexican migrants, who usually pay the lowest rates, are now regularly shelling out $10,000 apiece, and prices as high as $16,000 are not unusual, according to The Washington Times’ database of border smuggling cases.
Central American migrants are regularly paying $16,000 to $17,000, though some tell Border Patrol agents they were to pay $30,000 or more to be helped across the border and taken deeper into the U.S.
Going further afield, a Chinese couple that Customs and Border Protection officers found hidden in a Hyundai Tucson as it crossed the border from Mexico said they paid $45,000 apiece to be smuggled in.
Mr. Trump’s broad range of actions has fundamentally transformed the border to a point where it is unrecognizable compared to the heights of the Biden border surge a little more than a year ago.
The Border Patrol, which used to see days where agents detected more than 10,000 migrants rushing across, now regularly sees days below 500 encounters.
“Border crossings are down approximately 95%,” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, told reporters recently. “You talk to agents on the line, in their entire careers they’ve never seen crossing days as low as what they’re experiencing right now.”
And the cartels, who just a few years back were estimated to be making more money off illegal immigrant traffic than off drug smuggling, are on their heels, he said.
“The cartels in fact are enormously frustrated because they’ve never seen a clampdown like this in American history,” Mr. Miller said.
Jonathan Fahey, a former federal prosecutor and acting director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the Trump administration’s ability to end catch-and-release has scrambled the economics of smuggling.
SEE ALSO: Time to go: DHS tells illegal immigrants to ‘self-deport and stay out’
Before, cartels figured they needed to get migrants across the border and then relied on the generosity of the U.S. government to release them — and in some cases assist them in reaching their final destinations. Now, under Mr. Trump, the cartels need to avoid detection altogether.
“It’s hard to get in now because you’ve got to be a ’gotaway,’” Mr. Fahey said. “That’s a lot more challenging.”
Mr. Fahey said he is waiting to see what happens with prices of drugs such as fentanyl, which also cross the southern border.
The Times’ database covers the last seven years of criminal smuggling cases filed in federal court in border jurisdictions. The data is collected from the affidavits filed by federal agents and officers describing what the witnesses — the illegal immigrants who were being transported — said during the arrest.
Prices had steadily increased in recent years, though the last six months under President Biden were unusual in the wide range of payments. Some migrants were still paying top dollar, but others reported paying next to nothing. Experts said the cartels were likely charging whatever they thought they could get away with.
Now the payments are consistently at the high end.
That includes Josue Minchez-Fuentes, who was deported from the U.S. just after Christmas last year, then earlier this month tried to sneak back in. The Guatemalan man had agreed to pay a smuggler 150,000 Quetzals, which works out to about $19,300.
Two other Guatemalan migrants in the vehicle with Mr. Minchez told Border Patrol agents they were paying roughly $17,000 apiece.
In late January, agents in Texas agents encountered Felipe Barreno Ajpuac, a Guatemalan who said he was being charged $30,000 to be smuggled to New York.
Along the California coast, meanwhile, Border Patrol agents were alerted to illegal immigrants who’d been dropped off by Jet Ski and were whisked away in a BMW. Agents gave pursuit but the BMW got away.
Agents later spotted the BMW at a motel outside of San Diego and moved in, finding a Vietnamese man who said he was to pay $16,000 to sneak into the U.S.
Agents working a highway checkpoint near Laredo, Texas, on Sunday busted a Hyundai sedan carrying an illegal immigrant from Guatemala. He told agents he had paid 150,000 Quetzals to get across the border last month, and was paying another 150,000 to get deeper into the U.S. where he figured to make more money.
That works out to more than $38,000 for his journey.
Mr Fahey said the Trump administration’s determination to bring more criminal cases against smugglers themselves is also a factor in the price.
“It’s a higher risk for the smugglers to get locked up, so you’re going to have to pay them more,” he said.
The Times data suggests cartels have also started looking further afield for smuggling operatives, recruiting them from well beyond the border region.
Elver Eligio Aguilar-Cruz told agents he lived in New Jersey and received a request on Facebook asking if he would travel to Arizona to drive people. He arrived, rented a vehicle and received a map pin location for where to pick up illegal immigrants, according to documents in his court case.
He told agents he didn’t have a firm agreement on how much he was to be paid.
In another case, Luis Vega-Perez told agents he was from the Memphis, Tennessee, area, and was also recruited on Facebook through a Marketplace ad. He was offered $6,000 to collect three people at the border and drive them to Phoenix.
Social media has become a major recruiting tool for smuggling coordinators, who gravitate toward Facebook, TikTok and Instagram.
Using social media also allows smugglers to recruit juveniles as drivers.
Agents in Texas nabbed a 17-year-old boy who’d swooped in to pick up illegal immigrants who’d just climbed the border wall near Laredo. He said he had responded to a social media post asking for drivers, and he was promised $110 for each person he drove.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.