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CBS News Paints Coyotes As Humanitarians: Border Smugglers Are ‘Helping Migrants Survive’

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Amber Athey Podcast Columnist
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CBS News is being criticized for an article that claims human smugglers are actually helping illegal immigrants by serving as tour guides for the journey to the U.S. southern border.

Smugglers promise immigrants that they will find a way for them to enter the United States illegally in exchange for hefty cash payments. In many high-profile cases, smugglers leave immigrants for dead rather than potentially be caught bringing them across the border. For example, in October 2017, ten immigrants were roasted to death in the back of a tractor-trailer that was being used as part of a human smuggling scheme. (RELATED: Truck Driver Pleads Guilty In Human Smuggling Operation That Cooked Immigrants Alive)

According to CBS News, however, human coyotes are “helping migrants survive Central America’s grueling Darien Gap jungle.”

“I helped a lot of people, particularly women with children,” smuggler Emerson Gonzalez Jimenez said. “Because many have passed through here and not made it.”

“Most people think we (smugglers) are bad,” Gonzalez Jimenez said. “But if a person needs to go from there to here, and can’t do it… and they tell me, ‘I’m going to pay you $5, $10, $20… to take me to whatever location.’ And if I didn’t have a job at the time… to me, that’s good.”

Conservatives attacked CBS for trying to put a positive spin on the people who routinely endanger the lives of vulnerable illegal immigrants. (RELATED: American Smugglers Endangered More Than 60 Illegal Aliens, Several Found Trapped In Tractor Trailers)

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