The United States has been the top destination of choice for international migrants since 1970. Regular migration accounts for the majority of newcomers, but it is estimated that 10 million to 12 million migrants are unauthorized, or irregular, migrants—roughly a quarter of the migrant population.

Irregular migration has been the main area of public concern in the United States for the past few election cycles, which President Donald Trump has used to fuel his broader campaign against immigration. In 2024, 61 percent of voters said that immigration was very important to their vote. This figure was up 9 percentage points from the 2020 presidential election and 13 points higher from the 2022 congressional elections. This issue is particularly important to Republican voters. In 2024, 82 percent of Trump supporters said immigration was very important to their vote, 21 points higher than in the 2020 presidential election.

The United States has been the top destination of choice for international migrants since 1970. Regular migration accounts for the majority of newcomers, but it is estimated that 10 million to 12 million migrants are unauthorized, or irregular, migrants—roughly a quarter of the migrant population.

Irregular migration has been the main area of public concern in the United States for the past few election cycles, which President Donald Trump has used to fuel his broader campaign against immigration. In 2024, 61 percent of voters said that immigration was very important to their vote. This figure was up 9 percentage points from the 2020 presidential election and 13 points higher from the 2022 congressional elections. This issue is particularly important to Republican voters. In 2024, 82 percent of Trump supporters said immigration was very important to their vote, 21 points higher than in the 2020 presidential election.

The Trump administration has targeted migration on multiple fronts, both regular and irregular. This includes an attempted complete halt of the visa lottery program under the Diversity Immigrant Visa program, which was established in 1990 to ensure applicants from underrepresented countries had access to the U.S. immigration system.

The administration has also expanded the U.S. travel ban from 19 to 39 countries, by including many Caribbean and African countries that were previously under partial limits. Denaturalization cases of foreign-born citizens will also now see an uptick from an average of a dozen cases per year to potentially 100-200 denaturalization cases per month being sent to federal litigators.

Furthermore, effective April 24, 2025, the Trump administration revoked the temporary legal status of 530,000 people including Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans in the United States. The move cuts short a two-year parole granted to the immigrants under the Biden administration, who were allowed to enter the country if they had U.S. sponsors. A similar crackdown is also being imposed on the U.S.-Mexico border, used by immigrants from all over the world—including from South American, Central and South Asian countries—to enter the United States. On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump suspended asylum access by way of executive order, to stop what he called the “invasion” of the United States.

The White House, alongside much of U.S. media, has framed irregular migration primarily as a transnational crime, for which a strict law-enforcement approach is needed. The mass arrests conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) across the US is a manifestation of this approach. Lost in this attitude is that many irregular migrants are themselves victims and are highly vulnerable to abuse. Migrants are exposed to torture, extortion, abuse, blackmail, imprisonment, and even murder by smugglers.

Human smuggling is a highly exploitative practice, yet it has failed to garner sympathy within the U.S. because the general consensus is that migrants choose to cross the border illegally. If you ask most migrants, they will tell you that they were left with no choice but to leave their home country. Can acts borne out of such desperation truly be considered consensual?

Until 2022, many migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border flew into Mexico from the Caribbean and South America by taking advantage of Mexico’s visa-free policy. After mounting pressure from the U.S., Mexico made its immigration policies more stringent, by requiring visas from more nationalities, including from Venezuelans, Brazilians, and Ecuadorians. This potentially eliminated the option of flying to Mexico and then surrendering to authorities in the U.S. to claim asylum.

Crackdowns have also been made on the sea-based route. So, the only viable option left for migrants making journeys up north to the U.S. is to travel by land—a long and grueling trip where most pass through the Darién Gap on the Colombia-Panama border. The hike through the Darién Gap can take 10 or more days and involves not only natural dangers, but also smugglers and gangs that extort and sexually assault vulnerable migrants. This includes the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the Gulf Clan, a paramilitary group and Colombia’s largest drug cartel.

As the noose further tightens around pathways to the U.S., more and more migrants are now using the services of smugglers to facilitate their journeys. It is estimated that two out of every five migrants avail the services of smugglers. This number is expected to go up as the geographic and political barriers to mobility between countries are increased. It is a well-documented fact in every jurisdiction that smugglers are perpetrators of abuse.

A study I conducted on human smuggling in Pakistan discovered that smugglers exploit the desperation of vulnerable migrants; misinform them on the inherent dangers of the journeys; and extort, threaten, abuse, and torture the migrants. This study focused on the Pakistan-Iran-Turkey-Europe route, but a similar survey conducted of Latin American migrants discovered that almost half of all respondents surveyed had used the services of smugglers in 2022. A fifth of all respondents who used smugglers identified them as potential perpetrators of abuse. Only 6 percent of respondents saw smugglers as a source of protection.

The smugglers are often in cahoots with the law enforcement agencies that operate along a given route. In the report on the Pakistan-to-Europe route, complicity of law enforcement emerged as a key reason why smugglers are able to operate with impunity. Smugglers give kickbacks to officials in consideration for immunity from crackdowns. Research by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime indicates that human smuggling cannot occur without corruption.

Research identifies nine areas where corruption is most frequent: recruitment of migrants, the production of fraudulent documents, border crossings, transportation, movement through airports, accommodation, investigations, prosecution and trial of smugglers, and interactions between migrants and smugglers. Corrupt practices have been reported along nearly all smuggling routes.

Smuggling services are network-based and opportunistic, which means they are flexible, adaptable, and resourceful. The smugglers operate as a series of subnetworks controlling their own territories along the route, each with its own agents and relationships with law enforcement. In effect, a group of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border from the Caribbean and South America will be passed on from one subnetwork to another, each interlinked and controlling its own region along the route to form one cohesive smuggling network.

It is a self-perpetuating cycle where former migrants sometimes become smugglers because of the prospect of quick cash and the ability to leverage their own personal relationships and develop trust with potential migrants. Human smuggling has always been a highly profitable criminal enterprise. Globally, human smuggling as a business could be worth $10 billion or more per year.

A more holistic view is needed to address the issue of human smuggling, instead of populist slogans and indiscriminate law enforcement. Migrants should not just be described in a manner that indicates criminality and illegality. Rather, the issue should be reframed from law enforcement to a human rights issue—and any approach must be compliant with the United States’ obligations under international human rights laws. Law enforcement officials must be sensitized to the unique needs of vulnerable migrants.