Saturday, April 26, 2014

Yasiel Puig and Human Trafficking


Yasiel Puig and Human Trafficking

                The story that recently broke regarding the journey of Los Angeles Dodgers’ star Yasiel Puig from Cuba to the United States provides a rare insight into the reality of human smuggling.[1] While Puig had much bigger dreams in mind than most who seek out the help of smugglers, analyzing the process is useful. It is likely that very similar methods to those used to get past Cuban authorities are currently used to smuggle migrants within and out of Central Asia. Many victims of human trafficking at some point engage with smugglers to get them to their final destinations. This can range from unsuspecting targets attempting to get to Moscow to work for a trafficking ring posing as a modeling agency they found online to unwilling victims already in the grips of traffickers who are being moved or sold to another location.
                It is crucial to remember that for the smugglers, it is a business. Ultimately, expected returns must justify costs and potential risks. Certainly in Puig’s case, expected returns were justifiably very high. Over the past 5 years at least 20 defectors have been smuggled from Cuba who signed Major League Baseball contracts worth more than $300 million. Puig’s salary soared from $17 monthly in Cuba to over $150,000 per month for the Dodgers in 2013. The five men who drove the boat were in the employ of the infamous Mexican drug cartel, Los Zetas, who also controlled the landing spot on the Yucatan peninsula, Isla Mujeres. Similar to our understanding of likely behavior for human traffickers in Central Asia, this group moved any product that could produce a profit, from people to cocaine. Puig had already made several unsuccessful attempts to get out, and for this job the smugglers demanded $250,000 in return for smuggling Puig. He had a sponsor in the US, who initially offered to pay the fee in return for a contract with Puig that gave him 20 percent of all future earnings. When they arrived in Mexico, his smugglers demanded more from his sponsor, who refused to pay the full price. After a month of waiting for a deal, the sponsor sent in a “team of fixers” to deal with the smugglers and set Puig up with an agent. The leader of the smuggling group was later apparently executed after making repeated demands for payment.
                Smuggling people is much different from smuggling drugs. People cannot be squirreled away, and must be provided with food, water and reprieve. Unlike drugs, the easiest way to sneak people past authorities is in plain sight. While Puig was spirited out undercover from Cuba on a high-speed boat, after landing in Mexico and being released from his smugglers he was able to move about essentially as a legal immigrant. This required proper paperwork and typically the cooperation of corrupt officials. Smugglers must possess extensive knowledge of often highly intricate immigration regimes. In Puig’s case, given his eventual desire to play in the MLB, he was required by both league rules and US Treasury Department restrictions to establish residency in a third country. A mere formality, it forced his smugglers to take an alternate route (from the typical straight shot to Miami) to Isla Mujeres in the Yucatan, where their official contacts provided all the necessary documents and they were ensured no trouble by the local police.
Due to the nature of the black market, it is difficult to ascertain how comparable the costs of smuggling Puig out was to standard costs. An interesting website managed by ‘Havocscope’ attempts to give current prices on a variety of black market goods based on open-source information. While its reliability is dubious, it lists $10,000 as the going rate to smuggle someone from Cuba to the US.[2] Puig was certainly a unique case, given his need to transit via Mexico to meet MLB rules, and common knowledge of his future earnings potential.
                Puig’s account exemplifies the uncertainty and danger that are unavoidable throughout the smuggling process. Such situations are faced by smuggled migrants across the globe. At several points before finally succeeding, Puig was offered to be taken to the US by likely secret police trying to entrap him. When the money didn’t come through upon his arrival to Mexico, his smugglers threatened to maim and kill him. There is no guarantee for those arranging to be moved that they will not be exploited and harmed. One of the men who brought Puig across was being sought by US Homeland security for holding a migrant family captive until $40,000 was paid. To get to the escape point in Cuba, Puig hiked for 30 hours by night, hiding during the day, through backcountry and swampland to an unknown destination battling dehydration. At several points they were nearly intercepted by police, once having to wade out into the sea to escape. Upon finally arriving in the US, Cuban migrants face an uncertain situation, and turn to lawyers of Cuban descent for protection and guidance, often being extorted in the process. Even Puig has not fully escaped his past, as recent news reports say he faces continuing demands for payment by his smugglers, who even threatened his family still living in Cuba.  
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