Dan Mitchinson: US Correspondent on VIP packages offered by Mexican Cartels to smuggle people into the U.S.

US President Joe Biden recently unveiled a halt to asylum-processing at the U.S. border with Mexico when illegal entries reach a certain threshold. 

About 4,000 people already are entering the U.S. each day.  

Biden has received Republican criticism over an unprecedented surge in new arrivals in an election year. 

US Correspondent Dan Mitchinson told Heather du Plessis-Allan the cartels are offering ‘VIP packages’ for trafficking illegal immigrants across the border. 

He said “Experts say the return on investment for trafficking humans has overtaken drugs.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dan Mitchinson US correspondence with s Hiden. Hey, hither, So
this New York judge has dismissed the trace passing cases, right, Why.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Well, it's kind of interesting because they said they just
didn't have the evidence. I mean, there's fifteen people that
still face charges, and so you asked, well, what kind
of evidence were they looking for? You kind of wonder
about these were people who entered the building without permission, unlawfully,
they barricaded themselves inside. They were forcibly removed by policeness.
All has to do, of course, with the dozens that

(00:29):
were arrested at Columbia University's Hamilton Hall during the pro
Palestine protests about a month or so ago. So what
they're saying is that the District Attorney's office has declined
to prosecute cases where they get a large number of
people who were arrested as part of civil disobedience. So
the judge said, Okay, we're dismissing thirty of these cases.
These people have no criminal history, and I guess part

(00:50):
of the reason is the prosecutors had just limited video evidence.
They said the security cameras were covered by certain people
as soon as it started and prosecutors can identify everybody.
So that's kind of where the difficult part comes in.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Right, what's up with these Mexican ca tels?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
You know this this There are tunnels, there are who
knows how many tunnels between Mexico and the United States,
but this is a tunnel that reaches from part of
Mexico into El Paso, Texas, where illegals are charged up
to fifteen thousand dollars or more to come into the country.
And apparently now the cartels are offering what has been
dubbed VIP packages. They have everything functions by codes these days.

(01:28):
The cartels give their VIP customers and they're delivered by
cell phones, so that identifies which cartel you can call
them a travel agency a migrant is working with. So
whether you're a local police officer or your rival criminal gang,
you know not to harass these people. And I guess
the way they get through is a lot more comfortable.

(01:50):
And experts say the return on investment on trafficking humans
has actually overtaken you know, drugs over here. They say
a quilo of cocaine might get you fifteen hundred dollars
a little more, a little less, but the risk is high.
The cost benefit of trafficking a person is anywhere from
ten to twelve maybe fifteen thousand dollars. So they're coming
from all over around the world. Some are even paying
seventy five thousand dollars from China to get into the US.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, and the interesting thing about the people from China
is they're actually middle class, aren't they. It's not like
it's not people who you would consider necessarily be super desperate.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
No, no, they're not. And these are people that have
to have that kind of money. I mean, the people
that are coming up from the southern part of the
Mexico here, they just don't have that because you have
to grease the palms of so many people. There's officers
and border patrol and police and the people who transport them,
the cartels. So I mean, this is kind of what
I look at as a perfect example of a trickle
down economy because it involves almost you know, a thousand

(02:42):
people a month at this one crossing, but you go
through dozens of people to get there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Absolutely, what's happened with the cybertag.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
They're still trying to figure this out. There's this company
that provides car dealerships across the US and at North
in Canada with software and it manages sales and services
and they've been hacked. So that prompted the company need
to shut down most of its symptoms or systems rather
on Thursday, and this impacted about fifteen thousand dealerships for
making sales and big companies like General Motors. So they

(03:10):
thought they had a handle on it yesterday, happened again
today and the companies are now saying this outage could
affect dealerships for days. So you're talking about a data
breach hack that could cost you know, dealerships around the
country here and not to mention exporting to other countries
hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. And this is,
you know, something that we're seeing happen more and more

(03:31):
frequently over here.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Dan, thank you for running us through and joy your weekend.
It's Dan Mitchinson, now US correspondent.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
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