Migrant Smuggling and Female Smugglers in South Texas

Across South Texas, clandestine migration is often portrayed as crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and migrant smugglers are depicted as Mexican men. Yet, these narrow depictions fall short of the region’s realities and blur both the range of smuggling activities and the involved smugglers’ demographic profiles and backgrounds. This article uses a mixed-methods approach to address these issues and utilizes two original datasets: one with 184 South Texas migrant smuggling cases involving 289 arrested individuals, and another including 150 testimonies from migrants serving as material witnesses in smuggling cases. Through descriptive data analysis, the study finds that there are four migration stages within South Texas and smugglers’ demographic profiles and backgrounds vary by each stage. Notably, women participate in all four migration stages, although their frequency and reported motivations shift by specific smuggling activity.