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“People from Mexico interested in crossing to the United States, leave your messages,” invites the ad over a photo of people, dressed in camouflage, spending the night among bushes in an arid place.
The chords of a corrido -music from the Mexican north- accompany the offer to cross the border through the inhospitable desert of Sonora, in northwestern Mexico.
But TikTok, under the magnifying glass in the United States and Europe Because it is an alleged espionage window, it is not only used as an advertising platform by “polleros” or “coyotes”, as these merchants who are targeted by the authorities and the network itself are known.
Andrea, 25, and her friend Beatriz, 29, who left Venezuela last October, found advice there to overcomecritical points like the Darienthe Colombian-Panamanian jungle where many die in accidents or are assassinated.
During her time in Mexico, Andrea shows the AFP on her cell phone the profile of a young woman who managed to reach the United States, in the midst of the migratory wave that is shaking the region.
The woman put together a travel log to give advice on what to pack in her backpack and essential medicines. “You get it right 20% of the time,” says Beatriz about the usefulness of these recommendations. “Everyone’s experience is very personal.”
The uses of TikTok are multiple, but it is the alleged illegal surveillance that leads the general director of the network of Chinese origin, Shou zi Chew, to testify before Congress American this Thursday.
Zero tolerance
Another profile that offers to pass migrants through Tamaulipas (northeast), hard hit by drug violence, includes a photograph of minors aboard an inflatable boat in a river.
“We also do crosses with children and family,” the notice states.
Similar accounts are replicated by dozens in Guatemala, Colombia and Ecuador, confirmed the AFP.
Under the label #pollero, “safe work” is also offered for drivers in Arizona (southeastern United States), with payments of between 3,000 and 15,000 dollars. “If you have a car and want to make easy money, write me,” says a message in English.
From vans to trailers, they are used to transport migrants for around $7,000 each, often overcrowded and unventilated for hundreds of miles, with fatal outcomes.
Some 7,661 migrants have died or disappeared en route to the United States since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and 988 have died in accidents or from traveling in subhuman conditions.
The “coyote” advertising circulates despite violating TikTok rules, which prohibit the “promotion and facilitation of criminal activity.”
“Maintaining the safety of our community is a responsibility we take very seriously and we do not tolerate content that promotes human exploitation, including human trafficking,” he told the AFP a spokesperson for the network.
In the third quarter of 2022, TikTok removed 82% of the videos linked to criminal practices on its own initiative.
Hunting for “coyotes”
To counter this threat, the authorities have formed specialized cells.
In a room full of computers in Mexico City, experts from the Criminal Investigation Agency of the Attorney General’s Office monitor social media profiles.
On a board they indicate people of interest and their traces on the web.
The unit, created in 2017, has been involved in some 300 investigation folders on human trafficking, says Rolando Rosas, director of the Communications Center of the Federal Ministerial Police.
In Mexico, “digital service companies are obliged to deliver information when there is a crime,” says Rosas, highlighting the fruitful collaboration with the platforms.
Benjamín Oviedo, head of the unit, explains that his officers intervene, for example, when payment to a trafficker is agreed upon or made by cyber means.
But not always the ads are real. “Many of the things that we find could be a fraud,” says Rosas.
An IOM report published in February confirms that TikTok is used by traffickers as a “promotional medium” to show “successful cases of irregular crossings” on video. And he warns that this crime opens the door to other crimes such as the sexual exploitation of minors.
The organization surveyed 531 migrants in transit, of which 64% claimed to have accessed a smartphone and the internet during the trip.
Outside the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees, Brenand Vilne, a 30-year-old Haitian, displays on his phone publications that he searched for on TikTok to cross the Darién.
One shows people walking through the jungle; another, migrants crossing a river. A pilgrimage that is far from stopping, whether in the jungle, the desert or on the web.
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