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LEAD-IN BY HOST: With the recent multiple deaths of 19 immigrants in an abandoned trailer in Victoria, and a string of house raids exposing human trafficking operations in Houston's East End, the topic of smuggling has been in the news with greater frequency. While few people can deny the horrid conditions in which immigrant workers are transported and housed, media outlets rarely go beyond pointing fingers at the traffickers themselves. Rarely is the questions asked about WHY so many Latin American migrants put themselves at such risk, oftentimes only to acquire physically taxing jobs with low pay. Tonight, KPFT News takes a closer look at the practice of smuggling humans across the U.S./Mexico border. Shannon Young files this report: STORY: As poverty soars south of the border, the numbers of people migrating to find work in the United States job market is on the rise. At the same time, as restrictions on movement back and forth across the border tightens, the level of difficulty and danger associated with clandestine crossing increases. As a result, human smuggling has become a very lucrative business. Nestor Rodriguez , the director of the Center for Immigration Studies at the University of Houston describes the trends in migration over the past decade: "Well we've seen the border in the past 10 years, is that the U.S. government in the form of the border patrol has closed down more sectors, made it a lot harder for immigrants to cross the border, who are coming without papers. It started in the early 1990s in El Paso, through Operation Hold the Line. And then the second operation was in the San Diego area was Operation Gatekeeper. And this means a concentration of border agents, it means more surveillance technology, more fences, more barriers to keep immigrants out who are trying to enter without authorization. It is like a cat and mouse game where the migrants are left with fewer and fewer safe places to cross, so this affects the probability of death and the risk goes up for the migrants." Jesus Rios, from Michoacan, Mexico paid $1,000 to cross the border in 1986. He describes his experience: "We had to walk for two nights and out in the day with no water and no food. And once we got into a main road, they put us in a trunk of a car, which was really uncomfortable. It was really hard to breathe. It was just like a sardine, you know everybody just pile up on top of each other. And it was really hot. Really hot." Smugglers have taken advantage of this situation to raise their prices, which now range between $1500 - $10,000, depending upon the point of origin. But, these high prices don't necessarily guarantee safe passage. Sometimes it can even create a greater likelihood that the client will be held against his or her will in the U.S. until a relative or friend can pay their release. These ransom demands often can reach up to $700 more than the previously agreed upon price for the client's passage. Again, Nestor Rodriquez: "This is something that has been going on for a long time, actually. In the Southwest, especially near the Mexican border. In the interior, you'll find smuggling rings who bring in people, they hold them, they call their relatives and the relatives come forward and pay to get their relatives out from the smugglers and then take them home. This is part of the smuggling operation and obviously something that is not safe, and is dangerous, but a very profitable underground activity." Most Latin American immigrants come to the U.S. in search of higher wages. Oftentimes smugglers will go to small towns in Mexico to contract workers for seasonal jobs on large farms. Sometimes when the laborer cannot pay for the trip beforehand, indentured servitude arrangements are made. Herein lies the difference between smuggling and trafficking. Rob Williams, a Florida attorney involved with defending farmworkers from labor abuse explains the distinction: "Trafficking involves putting a person in a condition of involuntary servitude, or peonage. And it usually involves forcing people to work to pay off a debt. Typically, workers who are brought to the United States by coyotes or smugglers are charged anywhere from a thousand dollars to sixteen hundred dollars and oftentimes they don't have that kind of money. In some instances, coyotes will take these people to labor contractors or other employers, and they'll pay the coyotes for the people, and then the people will owe the employer the money. And sometimes that leads to a situation where people are essentially forced to work to pay off that debt. The real difference is that smuggling is just the act of bringing people into the United States illegally. Trafficking involves that, but also involves the further situation where you're basically forcing people to work to pay off the debt that is created by the smuggling transaction." In the year 2000, the Dept. of Justice set new guidelines to define human trafficking as a violation of federal civil rights laws. Rob Williams cites some recent convictions. "Well, herein Florida, in the last four or five years, we've had a number of cases in which people have been prosecuted for holding farm workers in involuntary servitude. And we had a very celebrated case of sex trafficking in which young girls from Mexico were essentially smuggled into the United States with promises that they would get jobs as maids and forced into prostitution." Increased restrictions on immigration combined with skyrocketing unemployment rates throughout Latin America have lead to more instances of criminal activity ... from human smuggling to modern-day slavery. However, with immigration reforms and temporary work programs put on hold after 9-11, the flow of cheap labor to the orange groves of Florida, the meatpacking houses of Kentucky and the tobacco fields of North Carolina continues unabated. Shannon Young, KPFT News, Houston. E-mail Shannon Young at news@kpft.org . This story was broadcast on June 13, 2003.