Illegal Turkish immigrants from Mexico to the US increase tenfold in the last two years

Illegal Turkish immigrants passing the Mexican border to seek asylum in the United States have risen to unprecedented numbers as a result of cooperation between transnational criminal organizations in Mexico and Turkey, according to a news story published in the Border Report website.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows that up to 21.965 Turkish nationals requested asylum since October 2021. That number was 2.580 in the fiscal year 2020, VOA Turkish said.

Border Report said that the Turks typically pay the transnational criminal organizations USD 15.000 before flying to Mexico City, and then these organizations decide from which section of the border they will cross.

“These folks that are crossing here today, tonight, they don’t decide, ‘that’s a nice place to cross.’ Their guides, their smugglers say, ‘you’ll cross through here because I already paid the fees' to the cartels that control vast expanses of U.S.-Mexico border”, said Victor M. Manjarrez, Director of the Center for Law and Human Behavior at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Other than Turks, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans and Brazilians represent some of the largest groups coming to the Southwest border from regions other than Mexico and Central America, federal officials said.