HIDALGO, Texas (Border Report) — The Biden administration is expanding efforts to stop human trafficking through the remote Darién Gap in Colombia and Panama and is offering rewards for information on cartel leaders.
During a call with reporters on Tuesday, senior officials with the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and State, said the remote jungles of the Darién Gap will now be the target zone to stop the smuggling north of migrants, as part of an operation known as Joint Task Force Alfa (JTFA).
This comes as President Joe Biden last week issued an executive order that greatly limits asylum claims on the Southwest border.
Border Report asked how this new expansion of JTFA will pair with new asylum policies at the border and what their outcome expectations are.
“Joint Task Force Alpha is focused on the law at an enterprise organizational level — taking down, targeting and taking down the leadership of these networks and these organizations,” a senior Department of Justice official said. “Certainly, we hope that these policies and these new rules will have far more effects and lower the quantity of people that are flying to the border, and then across it.”
To do that, the senior official said, “We’re going after the very top echelons of these organizations.”
Joint Task Force Alpha is celebrating its third anniversary and has been focused on eradicating cartels and criminal organizations in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Now it is adding Panama and Colombia to the list.
Since its start, the operation has resulted in over 300 domestic and international arrests and over 240 convictions in the United States, officials said.
“We are using every tool at our disposal to disrupt and dismantle the human smuggling networks that have spread misery throughout the Western Hemisphere,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement. “With today’s announcement, we are expanding our enforcement efforts to the Darién — among the most dangerous migrant crossings on Earth — and deploying rewards programs like the ones that have brought down drug kingpins to pursue human smugglers. To those who traffic human beings through the Darién, know this: the full force of the U.S. government is coming for you.”
The State Department is also offering $8 million in reward funds for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction, as well as financial disruption, of the Clan del Golfo cartel, a Colombian cartel that is the main crime organization trafficking migrants through the 60-mile Darién Gap. Rewards are offered through the agency’s Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program.
Rewards are being offered for:
- Up to $2 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of any key leader of Clan del Golfo involved in human smuggling in the Darién.
- Up to $1 million for information leading to the disruption of financial mechanisms of the Clan del Golfo to finance, sustain, or support human smuggling operations in the Darién.
- Up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of any key leader of Clan del Golfo involved in human smuggling in the Darién by encouraging and inducing aliens to enter the United States resulting in death
Information in response to the reward offer can be shared with Homeland Security Investigations and U.S. Customs and Border Protection by calling toll-free (866) 347-2423 or online at www.ice.gov/tips.
On Wednesday, the House Committee on Homeland Security will meet and will consider legislation that would amplify law enforcement operations with foreign partners to combat human smuggling and drug trafficking through the Combatting International Drug Trafficking and Human Smuggling Partnership Act of 2024
The number of migrant encounters in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley is relatively low since the order was issued — only about 200 per day.
On Tuesday, Pastor Abraham Barberi, who runs a church in Matamoros, Mexico, and helps migrants south of the border, said there were fewer than 50 migrants living in a camp alongside the Rio Grande where there used to be hundreds.
He said a few hundred migrants are living in a renovated hospital farther inland in Matamoros, which is guarded by Mexican police and sponsored by Catholic officials and the Mexican government.
He said the majority of migrants now are not waiting in border towns in Tamaulipas, Mexico, but traveling to large cities, like Monterrey, Mexico, where they are waiting to make an asylum interview via the CBP One app. About 1,500 interviews are granted daily at U.S. ports of entry, including several in South Texas.
“Because of CBP One, people have decided to wait and not cross the river,” Barberi told Border Report. “You would see some families get desperate and cross the river with children. And before this order, you’d see them. Now we’re telling them, ‘Don’t do it because you might get in trouble.'”
Under Biden’s proclamation, migrants who enter illegally face a five-year ban from re-entry into the United States.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
