Pouljean: I had ten illegal immigrants inside that hay baler. The Border Patrol set up their check station and they asked you if you were a United States citizen. There was no physical search. It's like God, there wasn't no physical search that morning because going towards Houston, there was a piece of metal flap that was flapping in the wind. So when I pulled over on the sign of the road in Little Bitty Town called Berclaire, Texas, which is a speed trap for DPS, like to sit in there and catch the feeders. And I got out of the vehicle, climbed up on top to fix that flap,. And I looked down inside
Migrants looking to enter the US from Mexico illegally often pay thousands of dollars to “coyotes,” or smugglers who transport them across the border. Once inside the US, they’re hidden in trailers or the trunks of cars to get past highway checkpoints where law enforcement is on the lookout.
That’s where a largely hidden workforce comes in — people in the US, many of them citizens, who are recruited by smuggling operations to drive the vehicles through the checkpoints, hoping to avoid detection. Often these drivers are themselves barely getting by, and they risk time in federal prison if they’re caught.
Reporter Julia Love, who wrote about this shadow economy for Bloomberg Businessweek, joins this episode to tell the story of one of those drivers–a Texan named Dennis Wilson. Wilson also comes on the podcast to describe his experience–and to tell what happened when he was pulled over early one morning.
Read Julia Love’s story: https://bloom.bg/3kNxlRI
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