Insight - E-coyotes: The Central American people smugglers who 'Like' Facebook


  • World
  • Tuesday, 05 Aug 2014

A border police officer is silhouetted as he stands on the 103-km (64-mile) long Highway CA13, which starts in Puerto Cortes on the Honduran coast and ends at Puerto Barrios in Guatemala, at a checkpoint near the border between the two countries, August 2, 2014. REUTERS/Jorge Cabrera

SAN PEDRO SULA Honduras/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Alan Villeda began smuggling people from Honduras to the United States in 1998, he could only communicate with customers via patchy phone calls. These days, he is a word-of-mouth success and new clients seek him out on Facebook.

Social media like Facebook and Skype are changing, and in some cases accelerating, the decades-old northward migration of Central Americans, U.S. and Honduran officials said, by providing crowd-sourced information on the risks and rewards of making the journey.

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