Daily Caller field reporter Jorge Ventura witnessed human smugglers openly taking payments from migrants they assisted in illegally transporting them to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Drug cartel members are making profits off of illegally smuggling migrants to the border, according to footage captured by Ventura late Wednesday. In the footage, migrants could be seen paying the cartel members as they crossed the border into Yuma, Arizona.
“Here in Yuma, there were 1,000 illegal crossings per day, that has jumped. There are right around 1,500 illegal crossings per day,” Ventura told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade Thursday. “I’ve been out here the past few nights and, Brian, we’ve been catching human smugglers bringing in hundreds and hundreds of migrants from all over the world. I’ve been meeting migrants from Peru, Cuba, Columbia, Brazil, Paraguay and all the way from Russia and Afghanistan entering the country illegally through human smugglers.”
The smugglers illegally entered the U.S. and openly took payments without any concern that Ventura and his film crew were capturing the moment on camera. After receiving the payments, the smugglers returned across the border into Mexico.
“They were brazen about it. They knew that we were filming them and they didn’t care. They take those payments, went back to the Mexican side and just continued, continued again, overwhelming border officials here,” he said.
Ventura said that smugglers transfer hundreds of migrants in the middle of the night, sneaking them through a gap in the border wall located in Yuma. Border agents continue to lack proper resources to tackle the crisis and process the migrants entering the U.S. (RELATED: With Title 42 In Limbo, Cartels Illegally Smuggle In Hundreds Of Migrants Across The Southern Border)
One agent told the Caller reporter that agents are becoming overwhelmed and demoralized.
“One thing that I’ve heard from a border patrol agent is that he feels like he’s just a Uber driver now,” Ventura said. “They’re no longer doing border enforcement, they’re doing border enrollment down here and they feel that they don’t have any support. They know that Title 42 isn’t a solution for this crisis, but it at least gives them a tool to somewhat deter migrants. But we are not seeing that. We are seeing record numbers of migrants being smuggled in in the middle of the night.”
Ventura posted footage to Twitter on Wednesday showing the migrants handing payments to cartel members at around 3:00 a.m. that morning.
As Title 42 is in limbo, cartels continue to move massive groups of migrants into Yuma, Arizona, in the middle of the night this group was smuggled in, we spotted the human smuggler taking his last payments from the migrants before returning to the Mexican side @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/yDiZCuvsgW
— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) December 21, 2022
Thousands of migrants lined up at the border in the middle of the night awaiting processing by border patrol officials as they expected Title 42, a Trump-era COVID-19 protocol, to be lifted Wednesday. The record-high number of migrants has led to longer waiting periods for apprehension.
On Monday, the Supreme Court imposed a temporary stay on the expiration of the policy, which expelled at least 1.8 million migrants to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Cartels on the Mexican side smuggle in multiple migrant groups from all over the world in the middle of the night into Yuma, Arizona , overwhelming officals and resources to the point migrants wait several hours to be apprehended as the lift of Title 42 is temporarily delayed pic.twitter.com/WWwdxzbfK1
— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) December 21, 2022
Cartels overwhelming border patrol officals on the Yuma side after smuggling in several groups from migrants mostly from South America as migrants are anticipating the ending of Title 42. This is the current scene as we approached 3 am on the Yuma border @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/zGkUpBzTXG
— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) December 21, 2022
MASSIVE: By far the biggest migrant line I’ve ever seen in Yuma. While you were sleeping, cartels smuggled several big groups of migrants from Russia all the way to Peru into the US , now hundreds await to be processed as Title 42 policy is in limbo @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/Z2iES1Vx2C
— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) December 22, 2022
Smuggler wasn’t too happy to see me again after we got him on video taking payments from migrants on American soil the previous night @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/fYTb39K1ak
— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) December 23, 2022
“This is one of the more sophisticated human smuggling operations,” Ventura previously said. “This once again shows how much control the Mexican drug cartels have on this border. [Homeland Security] Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas continues to say that the border’s closed, and the massive line shows different.”