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# 									Targeting Human Smuggling and Trafficking in the Northern Triangle and Mexico							

FPC Briefing

Ian Hanna, Co-Director of Joint Task Force Alpha, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas

James Hepburn, Co-Director of Joint Task Force Alpha, Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section

Wednesday, June 5, 2024, 1:00 p.m. ET

Washington, D.C.

June 5, 2024

## 								Summary							

        -  Directors of the Department of Justice’s Joint Task Force Alpha (JTFA), James Hepburn and Ian Hanna, brief on the task force’s accomplishments sinceits establishment three yearsago. Briefers discuss efforts to target leaders, organizers and facilitators of human smuggling and trafficking networksoperatingin ElSalvador, Guatemala,Hondurasand Mexico.   

**THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.**

**MODERATOR:**Okay, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center.  My name is Leah Knobel, and I am the moderator for today’s briefing.   

Today it is my pleasure to introduce Ian Hanna, co-director of Joint Task Force Alpha with the U.S.  Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas; and Jim Hepburn, co-director of Joint Task Force Alpha with the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section.  They will provide an overview of the task force’s accomplishments since its establishment three years ago and discuss efforts to target leaders, organizers, and facilitators of human smuggling and trafficking networks operating in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.

A reminder that this discussion is on the record, and the briefing transcript and video will be posted to our website, fpc.state.gov, later today.  Today’s briefing is being shared with our U.S.-based foreign journalists credentialed here at the Foreign Press Center and also journalists based in Latin America via the State Department’s Media Hub of the Americas.  This briefing will be conducted in English with Spanish interpretation available for those joining virtually.  And with that, I will turn it over to our briefers for their opening remarks.  

**MR HEPBURN:**Thank you, Leah.  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.  My name is Jim Hepburn, and I’m a co-director on Joint Task Force Alpha out of Washington, D.C.  Before coming to – well, in Washington, D.C., I work out of the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section with the Department of Justice.  Before coming to D.C. about 10 years ago, I was down on the border in Laredo, Texas as a federal prosecutor.  And before that, I was a local prosecutor in Philadelphia.  Very excited to be here today and to tell you all about some of the great work we’ve been doing with Joint Task Force Alpha.  

I’m going to turn it over to Ian to introduce himself.  

**MR HANNA:**Good afternoon, everybody.  As an initial matter, I want to say thank you for being here today and participating and showing an interest in this important area of discussion.  My name is Ian Hanna.  I am the other co-director of Joint Task Force Alpha.  I’m also an assistant United States attorney sitting in El Paso, Texas, my hometown.  And I’m thrilled to be here and talk with you all today.  Thank you.

So we’d like to start off talking a little bit about what the task force is and how it became to be.  And three years ago, Attorney General Garland, together with the Department of Homeland Security, stood this project up to be a joint – a dedicated task force to focus on the emerging threat of globalized human trafficking and smuggling.  To encourage a whole-of-government approach, the way it was organized was asking for dedicated resources in terms of human capital from the five southern federal border districts, to include the Southern District of California, the District of Arizona, the District of New Mexico, the Western District of Texas, and the Southern District of Texas.  Each one of those districts has contributed lawyers as detailees, so federal prosecutors assigned to the task force to work specifically cases that involve human trafficking and human smuggling.

Aside from that dedicated contribution of prosecutors at the local federal district level, there have also been contribution of human capital and resources from a whole host of organizations within the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security.  A few of those include the Office of Prosecutorial Development, Assistance, and Training; Office of International Affairs Violent Crimes and Racketeering Section; Office of Enforcement Operations Narcotic and Dangerous Drugs Section, Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section – all of which are nested underneath the auspices – the leadership in this case – of the joint task force through HRSP, which is the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Office.

**MR HEPBURN:**Even though we’re still very much in the nascent stages, the early stages for JTFA – and these are long-term investigations – I think we’ve shown some great results.  As you can see here, we have over 305 domestic and international arrests, 242 convictions within the United States, and 175 defendants sentenced – and here we are just about at our three – or almost up to our fourth year.  And you can see through this slide that the growth has really been exponential.  From June 2022, we go from 85 arrests to March of 2023 – 179 arrests – through December of 2023 – 260 arrests – and as you saw a moment ago, today, 305 arrests.  If this were a business, who would say that the growth is exceptional.  We’re doing really good work at JTFA.  

But we’re not in it just for the numbers and to look up and to build stats for these convictions.  We want these convictions to matter.  We are aimed at specific deterrence.  We are taking people out of the smuggling realm.  But we’re also looking for a general deterrence to send the message that human smuggling will not be accepted and will not be tolerated, and smugglers will not operate with impunity.  

You can see in this slide how we’ve delineated a standard smuggling case versus one that is carefully targeted and focused for JTFA purposes.  In the first case, we see a standard smuggler under the guidelines might receive a sentencing guideline range of four to ten months’ federal custody.  For the JTFA-targeted smuggler, we find ways to get up to, as you can see, 324 months to 405 months.  And how do we do that?  Well, we’re very careful about our case selection, so I want to tell you a little bit about one of the investigations that was the first investigation out of JTFA that started out of Odessa, Texas.  

Back in May of 2021, we learned of the death of an indigenous Guatemalan woman whose lifeless body was discarded on the side of the road in the desert in Texas.  We worked backwards – with all of our resources, we are able to go back and rely on the relationships that have been built over the years in Guatemala, and we were able to build a case against the smugglers operating in Guatemala and the United States.  Through that great work, the Guatemalans were able to arrest 15 smugglers in Guatemala, and at the same time we were able to arrest four of the leaders of this organization.  

After that arrest, it took less than two years to bring those individuals to justice in the United States.  That’s very, very fast.  We were able to arrest, extradite, prosecute, and see all four plead guilty to the lead charges in those cases, and all four received sentencing between 10 and 30 years.  This is exactly the kind of specific deterrence and general deterrence that I’m talking about.  

And we get there, again, through target selection.  We have what we have to work with with sentencing guidelines.  We don’t have the harsh penalties that we might see in the drug context, but we can get to a deterrent message.  You see, if we build the case where we look at leaders who have moved more than 100 or more aliens, we got a nice enhancement.  If it’s a case that results in death, we get a nice enhancement.  If an individual is moving a minor, an unaccompanied minor, we get another extra push.  So we need to be careful in our selection and make sure that we focus our resources to go after the most egregious targets.

Ian.  

**MR HANNA:**There’s a lot going on in this slide.  It’s a hard – hard to read, a lot of math.  But the fundamental takeaway is this:  There is a distinction between routine alien smuggling – migrant smuggling cases and trafficking cases – and JTFA cases.  And the takeaway from this slide is exactly what Mr. Hepburn said – the real innovation is targeting the leadership of these organizations both in the United States and overseas.  There is a misconception amongst certain criminal elements that if you are outside of the borders of the United States, you can engage in this type of illicit business without fear of prosecution, with some degree of impunity.  

And it is our mission to let those people know that that is not the case.  If your illicit activity has ties to the United States, we are going to investigate it, we are going to build cases, and together with our foreign partners, we are going to come to you and extradite you to the United States when appropriate and share information with our overseas partners also where appropriate to support prosecutions in our host – in our partner nation countries.  

So how do we get to a JTFA case?  There’s only two types of JTFA cases.  The first are what we call reactive cases, and examples of those cases are where there’s a tragedy – a semitrailer filled with people is abandoned, resulting in a mass casualty event.  We have cases where there are 50 or more people that have – that have tragically lost their lives.  That is one type of case.  That is a reactive case where we start at the end and we work backwards to try to find out where those people were coming from, what organization sponsored that illicit movement, and what organization is responsible for those deaths, and try to reach out and grab those people.  The second type of case is what’s called a proactive case.  That case – those types of cases typically originate through the sharing of law enforcement information from our partner nations, from our law enforcement agents on the ground, and also from our detailees that each of the southern federal districts have contributed.  

So where does that take us today and beyond?  Well, our focus now in 2024 and forward are on three primary areas, right.  The first is bringing folks to account for those mass casualty events that we talked about.  The second is focusing – following the trend lines and focusing on the connection to organized crime.  In this case, that most typically means cartels.  And then thirdly, to expand our footprint out to other areas of the nation where the business of migrant smuggling is beginning to have really palpable impacts on local communities.  

**MR HEPBURN:**  Never is it more clear how important this work is than when we – when we look at the tragic events that we’ve seen over the last few years.  This slide illustrates two of those most tragic events: in Chiapas, Mexico in December 2021, when we lost more than 56 migrants in an overturned tractor trailer – more than a hundred with serious injury as well; and then in San Antonio, Texas less than a year later in June 2022, where 53 were dead and many more injured.  It’s these sorts of events that give us the drive to push these cases, to work tirelessly to go after the smugglers operating south of our borders, and that’s what we’ll strive to do each and every day.  

**MR HANNA:**  And with that, we’re happy to take any questions anybody may have.  

**MODERATOR:**Thank you both.  So yeah, we’ll turn to the Q&A portion of our briefing today.  So for those of you in the room, if you have a question, please raise your hand.  And when you’re called on, state your name, media outlet, and please speak up.  And for those joining us on Zoom, please be sure your screenname includes your name, media outlet, and country.  And if you would like to ask a question, please submit it via the chat function of Zoom.  So we’ll start with questions from journalists in the room.  

Okay, Macarena.  

**QUESTION:**Macarena Vidal with El Pais in Spain.  Well, congratulations on your figures, but I was wondering – because usually detentions are only the tip of the iceberg.  So if detentions are increasing, that – does that mean that the problem is increasing as well, that there is more smuggling and more trafficking?  

**MR HANNA:**  I think it is a little bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario.  So historically there has always been movement of people through the southern border.  Depending on geopolitical issues around the world, usually informs – effects the nationalities of the individuals that we encounter on our southern borders.  I would say that the number of interdictions increasing is a function of many things that are coming together, some of which include increased migration, some of which include increased enforcement.  Our role, though, is to target the leaders of the organizations.  So we don’t – the joint task force itself is not focused so much on interdicting people entering the country without permission, but rather focused on the criminal organizations that are profiting from this illicit movement.  

**QUESTION:**  And do you, now – with the recent measures that – yesterday, there was a new measure announced to close the border.  Do you foresee that the efforts for smuggling and trafficking may have a – that it may impact on the smuggling and trafficking, this new law?  

**MR HANNA:** Unknown, because that’s not really our area, right.  Again, our area is not enforcing or interdicting people coming south to north.  What we’re focused on are the leaders.  So from that perspective, these organizations – criminal organizations that have built these logistical ties and these pathways and have put in this infrastructure to support this illicit business, they’re here right now.  And they continue to be here in the weeks and months later.  So that’s our area, and because that’s our area, that’s what we’re going to continue to focus on.  

**MODERATOR:**Okay.  Maria.  

**QUESTION:**  (Inaudible) 24.  Following up what she is doing – she is saying, with this new executed border, unaccompanied minors are one of the exceptions that are going to be able to cross the border if the border is crossed.  Does it concern you that maybe the smugglers are going to be sending more unaccompanied minors?  And I would like to know the figures right now, if they have been rising or lowering, of minors traveling by themselves in the last years?

**MR HANNA:**  So for figures on that, we wouldn’t have that information.  I think the best course of action would be to refer you to the Department of Homeland Security that could provide you with the concrete facts and figures on that.  And are we concerned about unaccompanied minors being used as pawns by transnational criminal organizations?  Of course, absolutely.  And that’s why this work is so important.  We found that once you can take out the top echelons of these leadership organizations, there’s a ripple effect that comes down the chain.  

And that – this is – goes to the heart of what I think what we’re trying to do.  Our effort, the joint task force, its not an anti-immigrant or anti-migration effort.  It is an anti-criminal and anti-organized crime mission.  And so we’re concerned anytime an – any innocent human is used to generate a profit illicitly.  These cartels, one of their hallmarks is using people as things to be discarded at any stage along the journey.  So that’s something that we feel very strongly about, of course.    

**QUESTION:**  (Inaudible) there – it might rise, like more smugglers are going to try to bring these accompanied minors because it’s one of the exceptions?  

**MR HANNA:**  I don’t know.  Don’t have a good answer for you.  

**MR HEPBURN:**But just to add to that, one of the things that the sentencing guidelines does very well is it addresses the unaccompanied minor issue.  You’ll see on one of our slides that it’s a four-level enhancement when a smuggler moves an unaccompanied minor.  That’s a big deal.  That equates to years in prison.  So the guidelines do contemplate the dangers involved there.  And when we hear about cases where unaccompanied minors are a part of it, it definitely gets our focus and gets our attention.  

**MODERATOR:**Okay, go ahead. 

**QUESTION:**  Yes, thank you.  Sara Canals for Cadena Ser, Spain.  I know you guys say that you are focused on the top echelons and the leadership, but I’m working on a story on how smugglers, cartels, use misinformation and social media to recruit.  I’m not sure if you – or I was wondering if this is something that you monitor.  And also, what channel is the most efficient one to recruit potential victims of human trafficking?  And also, if – what’s the channel that – where they are more efficient?  And if you have ever got to, like, the top echelons and leaders through social media, or through WhatsApp and these channels.  

**MR HEPBURN:**  Thank you for the question.  I’ll try to unpack a little bit of that.  First off, we do use social media as we can to conduct our investigations.  We’re able to use it – just as smugglers are able to use it to their benefit, we can use it to build our cases against those smugglers. 

To go back to the other questions that you were getting out about – and I’m sorry —

**MR HANNA:**  Recruiting.

**QUESTION:**  (Inaudible.) 

**MR HEPBURN:**  Yes.  No, no. 

**QUESTION:**  (Inaudible) channel that the cartels use.

**MR HEPBURN:**  Yes.  And we’re not going to be able to comment on that.  We just can’t talk about the successes that they’re having there.  But there was another topic that you raised – yeah. 

**MR HANNA:**  Well, I’ll talk a little bit about some of the methods from a historical perspective.  But I think it’s important to draw a distinction between human trafficking and human smuggling.  So not every legal system sees a distinction between those two things; our legal system in the United States does.  So when we’re talking about human smuggling, primarily what we’re talking about, in general terms, is the movement from – people from one country to another without permission, illegally, right?  Whereas human trafficking is the movement of people from one country to another for a follow-on illicit purpose.  Oftentimes that’s sex work, work at factories, what have you.  So those are two different things in our system. 

But I’ll tell you, historically, in terms of using social media, it – the Facebook scams – and this is to recruit people for moving drugs as well as people where there’ll be an advertisement for work at an exorbitant amount; one of the requirements is that you have a visa or some kind of legal status to cross a port of entry, and a lot of times that’s the job.  And people are recruited surreptitiously, unbeknownst to them sometimes to move any commodity, whether it be a drug, some other contraband, or people.  That’s a very common scheme that’s used by a lot of organizations to recruit on the southern border, through Facebook. 

**QUESTION:**  Do you think these things will decrease now, with this changes of law, the new executive order? 

**MR HANNA:**  Well, we certainly hope so.  But I think that one thing we can count on is any time there is a profit to be made through illicit business schemes like this is that the scenarios that you’re talking about will always exist in one shape or another.  And so part of our task is to try to get in front of those. 

**MODERATOR:**  Okay.  We’re going to move to Zoom for some questions now.  So the first one is from Daniel Collin from TN23, Guatemala.  He asks:  “What actions will be implemented in Guatemala, considering some trafficker groups known as coyotes started to raise their offered services to take migrants to the U.S. borders to avoid the new migration policies announced by President Biden?” 

**MR HEPBURN:**  So I think we’re going to continue to do the great work that we have done already.  We have relationships with prosecutors in Guatemala that we work with on a regular basis, and we will continue to pursue those organizations with the Guatemalans and with our partners.  I don’t think that any action that was taken by the President or otherwise would impact the work that we’re doing down there. 

**MODERATOR:**  Okay.  And then another one from Zoom.  This comes from Lesli Almonte; she’s with Diario Libre in the Dominican Republic.  She asks:  “Has the U.S. received trafficked persons originating from Haiti and the Dominican Republic?  How many Dominicans did the U.S. receive in 2024?” 

**MR HEPBURN:**  This is a question that we’re going to have to defer to our DHS partners, as they would have the latest statistics on those numbers. 

**MODERATOR:**  Okay.  I have one submitted advance question that I can go to now.  This one’s from Joel Cano with Infobae in Mexico:  “How many and which criminal groups are involved in human trafficking in Mexico?” 

**MR HANNA:**  I think – so keeping in mind the legal distinction between human trafficking and human smuggling, I’ll speak, I guess, as to both.  I think it’s fair to say that every major cartel in Mexico has its hand in some way, shape, or form in the illicit business of human smuggling, and that is – there is no question about that.  Human trafficking, as we define it, probably to a lesser extent; the money seems to be – the vast amount of money seems to be generated right now via human smuggling. 

**MR HEPBURN:**  Just add to that through the course of history, the cartels have always profited from human smuggling, whether it’s the charging of a piso to operate in their territory or a tax to operate in their territory, or by being actually hands-on with the smuggling itself.  I think we are seeing a shift where the – where the cartels have seen how profitable it can be to move humans, just as they have always moved drugs, and they have decided to not only charge a piso but to actually be more hands-on with smuggling itself. 

**MODERATOR:**  Thank you.  The next question comes from Ernesto Cornejo with Channel 12 in El Salvador.  He asks:  “How will the State Department work with Northern Triangle countries to combat human trafficking, and what are the results obtained to date?” 

**MR HEPBURN:**  Well, we certainly don’t speak for the State Department.  But I can tell you from the perspective of Joint Task Force Alpha, we will continue to work with our foreign partners in the Northern Triangle countries and Mexico, as we have for the past three years.  And that is dedicating time and resources to building meaningful partnerships with our partner nations, training joint – not necessarily joint investigations but investigations that yield results on both sides of our respective borders, and certainly the facts and figures that speak for themselves that you’ve seen on the previous slide. 

**MODERATOR:**  And then Ernesto asks another question:  “How will the United States work with Panama and Colombia in trafficking in the Darién?” 

**MR HANNA:**  I think it’s a similar answer.  As routes that organized crime, transnational criminal organizations, use to move people, we will certainly strive to adjust our efforts to address those routes.  They are continuing to evolve, not just through the Darién Gap but through all sorts of places.  So as new threats emerge, we will try to be agile and responsive to those threats and apply our time and effort and resources as long as those threats may emerge. 

**MR HEPBURN:**  And just to add to that, it’s a very important question.  Because remember, when we’re talking about international smuggling, we’re often talking about migrants who are starting their journey in far-away lands and come flying into, say, for example, Sao Paolo, Brazil.  And they’re working overland up through South America, through Colombia, through Central America, through Mexico, and into the United States.  And remember, that includes some very treacherous territory, including through the Darién.  

So while our focus is currently to look at smugglers who are operating in Mexico and in the Northern Triangle, we also are keenly aware of the dangers that occur south of those regions as well.  And so we do have that on our radar.

**MODERATOR:**  Okay, I’ll turn back to the room to see if there are any additional questions.  Go ahead, Macarena.

**QUESTION:**  Hi.  Macarena Vidal from El Pais, again.  Since you mentioned that one of your targets for this year and the future is increasing your footprint in the communities where smuggling has an impact, I wonder if you could describe a bit what the impact is that – and where are those communities.  

**MR HANNA:**  So the – again, I’ll use quotation marks – the “business model” of human smuggling is one that is based on – almost always on suffering.  It’s human suffering that is prompting people to try to migrate, and these organizations take advantage of that to gain profit, and then further traumatize people as they’re on their journeys to points onward.  

Our mission is to try to in many ways save lives and alleviate that suffering by taking down these organizations.  These organizations typically use well-worn paths of ingress and egress and movement, both to the United States and then once in the United States to points east, west, and north.  So when we’re talking about expanding our footprint, really in a – in many ways what we’re talking about is following those paths, the logistics trails, to places, to major commercial centers and population centers that are used as hubs for transport; and beginning to look at cases that originate in those localities, build up those cases, and target higher levels of organizations in those specific municipalities – with ties, of course, to our partner nations.  

**MODERATOR:**  Okay, we’ll go back to one final question on Zoom.  Lesli Almonte with Diario Libre, she’s asked another question:  “Has the United States received Dominican traffickers?”

**MR HEPBURN:**  I’m not sure if I follow the question.  Are they asking if we’ve extradited Dominican traffickers?

**MODERATOR:**  I’m going to – I’m honestly not sure.  Perhaps we’ll get some more clarification from Lesli in a moment.  Yes, yes, I think that’s what they’re asking.

**MR HEPBURN:**  Okay.  So Dominican Republic is not one of the mandated countries under JTFA.  However, we have other programs, like ECT, the Extraterritorial Criminal Travel nework, which focuses on other countries that might have smugglers who move migrants that perhaps present a danger to the United States or where the migrants would be in danger themselves.  It’s possible that under the ECT program, that some of those smugglers and/or traffickers have been pursued, but I’m not able to comment on much more than that at this point.

**MODERATOR:**  Okay, we actually have one more question on Zoom if we can take one more.  So this one comes from Andres Fidanza with El Observador.  Andres asks:  “Is it true 30 percent of Mexican territory is controlled by narco groups, principally the Sinaloa and New Jalisco Generation cartels?”

**MR HANNA:**  So we can’t comment on that because we don’t have those statistics.  But what I would say that is generally true is that Mexican cartels operate on Mexican territory, just as they operate in other countries.  So from that perspective, they are active participants all over the place, and that in some ways brings us back full circle to where we began, because those are types of organizations that we’re looking to target, that we have targeted.  But in 2024 and moving forwards it’s those organizations – the ones that are truly transnational, who are generating massive amounts of money every day in this illicit business – those are the groups that we’re looking to target and take down.  

**MODERATOR:**  Okay.  Thank you both.  I’d like to turn it back to you briefly if you have any final remarks.

**MR HANNA:**  Again, thank you for your interest in reporting on this area.  It’s one that is – it is of interest, obviously, to the United States, but I would respectfully submit to each of you that it is of interest globally, and certainly of particular interest here in the Western Hemisphere.  We are laser-focused in building meaningful relationships with our partners overseas.  This is not just the United States trying to act.  This is the United States trying to act in partnership with our partner nations in this project of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

**MR HEPBURN:**  Just briefly to thank you all for being here today, and to echo the fact that without these partnerships, we would not get anywhere.  We could not extradite these smugglers, we could not pursue these smugglers, and there would be no justice for individuals like those that I discussed earlier today.  Thank you.

**MODERATOR:**  Okay, thank you both.  I want to give a special thank you again, and also to those who participated today.  Thanks so much.  This concludes our briefing.

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