Children on both sides of the US-Mexico border help smuggle people and drugs into the United States. For most of them, it’s an occasional job that they do alongside many others. These same teenagers sell goods in the markets, clean tables in restaurants, apprentice in workshops, and labour on construction sites.
When asked why, they usually say they need money yet lack opportunities to earn it. They are poor. They live in distant parts of the city where public transportation is scant. They face stigma due to their poverty and the darkness of their skin. And they have left or been pushed out of school. These characteristics narrow their employment options. They know that smuggling is illegal, but on the border it is one of the few ways that young, marginalised people can effectively convert their knowledge into profit. Their earnings, while limited, benefit them and their families, so for them smuggling is a legitimate, albeit criminalised, form of labour.
It is also a dangerous one. Children can get lost in the desert or drown in the Rio Grande. They can be bitten by animals or apprehended by US immigration authorities. Yet some of the most severe violence they face comes from within: from other teenagers involved in the smuggling of people and drugs. Despite the stories of indomitable drug mafias operating in the borderlands, border children’s testimonies make clear that those recruiting them as guides, runners, and lookouts are often no more than loosely organised groups of young people like themselves. Some are even recruited as enforcers and make a living by punishing others. Violence among young men in this setting has become normalised. To a degree it is even expected.
