Crossing borders: how an international team uncovered deadly cargo trips across the U.S. and Mexico

By Ronny Rojas, Noticias Telemundo; Brenda Medina, ICIJ; Àngela Cantador, CLIP

In 2023, while covering the death of 53 undocumented migrants who were trapped in a cargo truck in San Antonio, Texas, Noticias Telemundo journalists put a call-out in their stories and social media platforms asking immigrants who had traveled in similar conditions to share their experience. 

We wondered how widespread this cruel business was and what factors come together to make people take these treacherous routes, often with children, despite the obvious danger this posed.

We expected to hear testimonies from people who traveled for hours on Texas and Arizona highways inside these death traps. But instead, we received dramatic testimonials of people who said they had survived days-long trips across Mexico crammed in cargo vehicles with little ventilation, almost no food and buckets inside the containers for those who couldn’t hold in their bodily needs. 

We realized that we had an important, previously untold story in front of us: the smuggling of migrants in trucks across Mexico to reach the U.S. border was more common and the conditions were far worse than the cases we had documented within the U.S. 

This is how we met Yanira Chávez, a 36 year-old Honduran woman who in 2019 crossed Mexico inside a truck, along with their 5-and-9-year-old children and 180 other migrants. 

She bought two suitcases with heels because the “coyote” — the smuggler — her husband paid to take them to the United States assured her that they were going to cross Mexico by plane and “could not look like migrants” at the airports. But instead, Yanira and her children were almost forcibly put into a container. They spent four days and four nights in the container while they crossed 1,500 kilometers (nearly 1,000 miles) from Villahermosa, in the south of Mexico, to Reynosa, near the U.S. border.

Every few weeks — sometimes days — local Mexican news reported that some truck carrying hundreds of migrants had been abandoned on the side of a road or had been involved in an accident. They are the parallel of the barges that ply the Mediterranean, laden with lives stranded in its waters, lost in its depths.  

We were faced with entirely new questions: How does this human smuggling business operate in Mexico? Who runs it? How do these people end up in these containers? What routes do these trucks travel on? How is it possible for them to travel thousands of kilometers and bypass police and army checkpoints packed with hundreds of people without being detected? How many migrants have lost their lives inside these vehicles? Who is responsible for these deaths?

To answer these questions, we first needed data that would allow us to identify smuggling patterns and how this illicit activity has evolved over the years. We also needed to conduct extensive reporting in Mexico and the countries of origin of most migrants who cross Mexican territory. Very quickly we realized that there was no official count of encounters, dropouts and accidents involving trucks smuggling migrants in Mexico. Governmental authorities have only started tracking these cases since 2022 and have been doing so irregularly.

Furthermore, reporting in Mexico is very dangerous. You have to know how to navigate these cities and towns, and what the limits are for reporters. Sources and knowledge are needed to obtain valuable information and avoid simplistic narratives.

That’s why Telemundo reporters approached the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (Spanish acronym CLIP) — which has built a formidable network of local media and journalists in Latin America — and proposed a collaborative investigation. CLIP assembled a team of local reporters in different regions of Mexico, in Honduras and in Guatemala, plus animators, illustrators and social media specialists in other countries to collaborate. Researchers from Bellingcat and ICIJ also joined the team.

To understand the scale of the problem, we compiled reports in local media and official press releases spanning six years (2018 to 2023), to create the database that became the backbone of the stories. In a manual process that took almost a month, we extracted information such as the date of the incident, time, number of immigrants, nationalities, number of deaths, location, departure point, destination and more. 

Overall, we documented the passage of 19,000 migrants in over 170 trucks, with at least 111 fatalities and dozens of injuries between 2018 and 2023. However, the experts said that the 19,000 journeys documented by the team are undoubtedly an undercount given the amount of migrants crossing Mexico in the past few years and the fact that most trucks carrying migrants are likely never detected. 

We tried to locate the geographical coordinates of the events as precisely as possible based on the available information or visual clues offered by photographs and videos shared by authorities or the press. Sometimes the news report or government information about a truck with migrants described a tollbooth where the truck was inspected or mentioned the name of an area or a milestone along the road. In some cases only a “tramo” (a section of a highway) was outlined. The data journalists from Noticias Telemundo and ICIJ successfully confirmed the exact coordinates for 99 events out of 156 in total. Those were mapped by CLIP, which also detailed the events that led to the discovery of the smuggled migrants including inspections, accidents and abandonments. 

It was tedious, slow and time-consuming work, but it was worth it. For the first time, the figures from the data analysis give a glimpse of the reach of migrant smuggling across Mexico. We were able to better understand which roads criminal organizations were using to transport migrants and how the use of tractor-trailers for human trafficking, as well as the number of accidents and deaths related to the illegal activity, increased between 2022 and 2023 as authorities restricted the passage of migrants through Mexican territory.

With this preliminary data, we sent requests for information to the different Mexican authorities with jurisdiction in migration cases, to compare our numbers with whatever official figures that were available. More than 70 requests for information were sent between January 2023 and April 2024.

Telemundo interviewed victims in the U.S. who recalled the inhumane conditions in which they traveled. The outlet produced a 40-minute documentary along with a multimedia special report. In Europe, Bellingcat tracked smugglers offering their services on social media, and geolocated key sites in the stories. Reporter Martha Olivia López spent weeks approaching people in the trucking industry, until she got a revelatory interview with a driver who said he has transported migrants hidden in cargo trucks and described how the smuggling operations work. 

Reporters from Plaza Pública, Contracorriente and ICIJ visited small towns in Guatemala, Honduras and the Dominican Republic to interview migrants who had taken the risky journeys only to be deported back to their countries, as well as the relatives of people who died of asphyxiation inside trucks or in accidents.

The team was able to make important revelations about the systemic problems that allow this human smuggling to operate with impunity in Mexico. 

Our investigation revealed critical systemic failures that allow human smuggling to flourish unchecked in Mexico. We uncovered how harsh immigration policies by both Mexico and the U.S., combined with widespread corruption, force migrants into dangerous alternatives—such as traveling in cargo trailers.

Between 2016 and 2023, Mexican courts recorded only 35 human trafficking convictions. Shockingly, the states most commonly used by smugglers showed little to no investigation or prosecution. Drug cartels have increasingly taken over migrant transport, especially via trailers.

For the first time, a truck driver who transported migrants spoke publicly, alleging collusion with federal authorities who allow passage toward the U.S. border. We also revealed how the investigation into the 2021 Chiapas trailer crash that killed 56 migrants has stalled, despite promises of justice. A proposed international commission, announced by Mexico to probe the tragedy, met only twice and failed to deliver any results.

Through survivor accounts and families’ testimonies, we illustrated the harrowing experiences of thousands forced to travel hidden in trucks along Mexican highways.

Additionally, we exposed how human smugglers use social media to lure migrants. One coyote, known as the “Ghost of Tamaulipas,” built a TikTok following of over 100,000 while claiming to be in Mexico. We revealed he was actually operating from the U.S.

Just three days after publication, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador responded publicly, acknowledging the existence of a trafficking network and promising government action against transporters and criminal leaders.