TikTok becomes a tool of choice in cat-and-mouse game between migrant smugglers and authorities

A depiction of a smuggler videoing migrants walking through the desert for later posting on social media based on hundreds of TikTok videos reviewed by the AP. (AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin)

MEXICO CITY — The videos roll through TikTok in 30-second flashes.

Migrants trek in camouflage through dry desert terrain. Dune buggies roar up to the United States-Mexico border barrier. Families with young children pass through gaps in the wall. Helicopters, planes, yachts, tunnels and Jet Skis stand by for potential customers.

Laced with emojis, the videos posted by smugglers offer a simple promise: If you don’t have a visa in the U.S., trust us. We’ll get you over safely.

At a time when legal pathways to the U.S. have been slashed and criminal groups are raking in money from migrant smuggling, social media apps like TikTok have become an essential tool for smugglers and migrants alike. The videos — taken to cartoonish extremes — offer a rare look inside a long elusive industry and the narratives used by trafficking networks to fuel migration north.

“With God’s help, we’re going to continue working to fulfill the dreams of foreigners. Safe travels without robbing our people,” wrote one enterprising smuggler.

As U.S. President Donald Trump begins to ramp up a crackdown at the border and migration levels to the U.S. dip, smugglers say new technologies allow networks to be more agile in the face of challenges, and expand their reach to new customers — a far cry from the old days when each village had its trusted smuggler.

“In this line of work, you have to switch tactics,” said a woman named Soary, part of a smuggling network bringing migrants from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso, Texas, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition that her last name wouldn’t be shared out of concern that authorities would track her down. “TikTok goes all over the world.”

Soary, 24, began working in smuggling when she was 19, living in El Paso, where she was approached by a friend about a job. She would use her truck to pick up migrants who had recently jumped the border. Despite the risks involved with working with trafficking organizations, she said that it earned her more as a single mother than her previous job putting in hair extensions.

As she gained more contacts on both sides of the border, she began connecting people from across the Americas with a network of smugglers to sneak them across borders and eventually into the U.S.

Like many smugglers, she would take videos of migrants speaking to the camera after crossing the border to send over WhatsApp as evidence to loved ones that her clients had reached their destination safely. Now she posts those clips to TikTok.

TikTok says the platform strictly prohibits human smuggling and reports such content to law enforcement.

The use of social media to facilitate migration took off around 2017 and 2018, when activists built huge WhatsApp groups to coordinate the first major migrant caravans traveling from Central America to the U.S., according to Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University focused on the migrant smuggling industry.

Later, smugglers began to infiltrate those chats and use the choice social media app of the day, expanding to Facebook and Instagram.

Migrants, too, began to document their often perilous voyages north, posting videos trekking through the jungles of the Darien Gap dividing Colombia and Panama, and after being released by extorting cartels.

A 2023 study by the United Nations reported that 64% of the migrants that they interviewed had access to a smartphone and the internet during their migration to the U.S.

Around the time of the study’s release, as use of the app began to soar, Correa-Cabrera said that she began to see smuggling ads skyrocket on TikTok.

“It’s a marketing strategy,” Correa-Cabrera said. “Everyone was on TikTok, particularly after the pandemic, and then it began to multiply.”

Last year, Soary, the smuggler, said that she began to publish videos of migrants and families in the U.S. with their faces covered and photos of the U.S.-Mexico border with messages like: “We’ll pass you through Ciudad Juárez, no matter where you are. Fence jumping, treks and by tunnel. Adults, children and the elderly.”

Hundreds of videos examined by the AP feature thick wads of cash, people crossing through the border fence by night, helicopters and airplanes supposedly used by human smugglers known as coyotes, smugglers cutting open cacti in the desert for migrants to drink from and even crops of lettuce with text reading “The American fields are ready!”

The videos are often layered over heavy northern Mexican music with lyrics waxing romantically about being traffickers. Videos are published by accounts with names alluding to “safe crossing,” “USA destinations,” “fulfilling dreams” or “polleros,” as smugglers are often called.

Narratives shift based on the political environment and immigration policies in the U.S. During the Biden administration, posts would advertise getting migrants access to asylum applications through the administration’s CBP One app, which Trump ended.

Amid Trump’s crackdown, posts have shifted to dispelling fears that migrants will be captured, promising American authorities have been paid off. Smugglers openly taunt U.S. authorities: one shows himself smoking what appears to be marijuana right in front of the border wall; another even takes a jab at Trump, referring to the president as a “high-strung gringo.”

Comments are dotted with emojis of flags and baby chickens, a symbol meaning migrant among smugglers, and other users asking for prices and more information.

Cristina, who migrated because she struggled to make ends meet in the Mexican state of Zacatecas, was among those scrolling in December after the person she had hired to smuggle her to the U.S. abandoned her and her partner in Ciudad Juárez.

“In a moment of desperation, I started searching on TikTok and, well, with the algorithm videos began to pop up,” she said. “It took me a half an hour” to find a smuggler.

After connecting, smugglers and migrants often negotiate on encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Telegram, doing a careful dance to gain each other’s trust. Cristina, now living in Phoenix, said that she decided to trust Soary because she was a woman and posted videos of families, something the smuggler admitted was a tactic to gain migrants' trust.

Smugglers, migrants and authorities warn that such videos have been used to scam migrants or lure them into traps at a time when cartels are increasingly using kidnapping and extortion as a means to rake in more money.

One smuggler, who asked to only be identified by his TikTok name “The Corporation” because of fear of authorities tracking him down, said that other accounts would steal his migrant smuggling network’s videos of customers saying to camera they arrived safely in the U.S.

“And there’s not much we can do legally. I mean, it’s not like we can report them,” he said with a laugh.

In other cases, migrants say that they were forced by traffickers to take the videos even if they haven’t arrived safely to their destinations.

The illicit advertisements have fueled concern among international authorities like the U.N.‘s International Organization for Migration, which warned in a report about the use of the technology that “networks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and evasive, thus challenging government authorities to address new, non-traditional forms of this crime.”

In February, a Mexican prosecutor also confirmed to the AP that they were investigating a network of accounts advertising crossings through a tunnel running under the border fence between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso. But investigators wouldn’t provide more details.

In the meantime, hundreds of accounts post videos of trucks crossing the border, of stacks of cash and migrants, faces covered with emojis, promising they made it safely across the border.

“We’re continuing to cross and we’re not scared,” one wrote.

Associated Press journalist Edgar H. Clemente contributed to this report from Tapachula, Mexico.

Illustrations are based on hundreds of videos posted on TikTok examined by the AP that advertise travel to the U.S. to migrants. Videos are often laced with emojis, make bold promises of success and promise safe travel.

Article by Megan Janetsky.