[imagesource:x/vice]

If you were a fan of the hit show Queen of the South, you’d know the story of Teresa Mendoza and her shenanigans across the US-Mexico border. But that was a work of fiction – the real Teresita is a 60-year-old granny named Ofelia Hernandez-Salas.

Hernandez-Salas was extradited to the United States this week to face charges of smuggling people instead of drugs, from countries as far away as Uzbekistan and Bangladesh into the United States. According to U.S. authorities, Ofelia Hernandez-Salas headed a transnational smuggling network that was responsible for thousands of people illegally entering the U.S.

Prosecutors allege she picked up migrants at a bus station in Mexicali, northern Mexico, and took them to the U.S. border, where she directed them to cross the border illegally by providing them with a ladder to climb over the border fence, directing them to a hole under the fence, and providing a plan for them to walk over a waterway.”

Not really El Chapo levels, but human smuggling has become an increasingly booming business as entering the U.S. legally has become very difficult under American immigration policy.

Most smugglers are men and even teenage boys, so Hernandez-Salas’s gender and age make her what they call ‘an outlier’. This did not stop her from running a brisk business as she and co-conspirator Raul Saucedo-Huipio robbed migrants of their money, cell phones, and other personal items before wishing them hasta la vista across the border.

While Central and South American countries are the biggest drivers of migration to America, a surging number of people from Asia and Eastern Europe are now also rocking up at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Those with money often pay smugglers to arrange the journey, including crossing the deadly Darién Gap jungle that separates Colombia and Panama. Migrants from Afghanistan are even more likely to be allowed into the U.S. for asylum because the U.S. doesn’t have a deportation agreement with the Taliban.

Ofelia Hernandez-Salas is just one of the ‘facilitators’ of a huge influx of migrants into the U.S. in recent months. With nearly 100 000 migrants entering New York over the past year, Mayor Eric Adams claimed that the “issue will destroy New York City.”

While the Big Apple freaks out over Panamanians roaming their streets, and the U.S. Leadership glitches and stutters like an old dial-up modem, banditos like Ofelia Hernandez-Salas will keep on selling the American Dream to anyone who can make it to the nethergate.

[source:vice]