For most teenagers looking for some extra cash, a typical job involves mowing lawns, babysitting or working at a fast-food restaurant. But some teens in border states are finding a much more lucrative and dangerous job these days...helping to smuggle migrants across the border. A new Fox News report shows cartels using social media apps like TikTok to recruit American teenagers to transport migrants for cash. The cartels offer $3,000 or more per ride, with some young people using their parents SUVs for the trips, without the parents' knowledge.
This is just the latest humanitarian consequence of the ongoing border crisis, along with overcrowded youth migrant facilities and abandoned toddlers. Mark Krikorian, executive director at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), believes it is a direct result of the Biden administration's failed border policy. "If you don't want American teenagers to get sucked into these kinds of deals, then you need to have broad immigration enforcement," he says. "Instead, President Biden has rolled back immigration enforcement, and in a sense put up the welcome sign for illegal immigrants."
Krikorian tells KTRH the cartels use these American teens to shield themselves from arrest. "The part of the smuggling process that is most likely to result in people getting arrested ends up in the hands of teenagers who aren't part of the smuggling network," he says. "So the actual smugglers have got nothing to lose."
All of this is being organized on social media platforms, which seem to be too busy fact-checking memes, policing COVID vaccine content, or targeting conservatives to notice. "Clearly, social media companies have a responsibility when their platforms are being used for criminal activity," says Krikorian. "That's far more important than whether somebody made some stupid joke."
"I understand the social media companies can't police everything on their platforms," he continues. "But there has to be some way for them to do at least a better job of screening out and cutting off the use of their platforms by these criminal networks."