X-ray imaging caught this reefer filled with 150 people bound for the U.S. interior from the border zone near Laredo as the new year turned just a couple weeks ago. It's part of an uptick of such busts U.S. Border Patrol is asking the trucking community for information about. Find contact information for the Laredo sector office of the border patrol via this link.
In this week's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, Matthew Hudak, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Chief Patrol Agent for the Laredo, Texas, sector, delivers a message for the trucking community about what he’s seeing in the numbers since October 2020 when it comes to busted human smuggling operations. There's been a dramatic uptick in instances of drivers moving strange cargo in their dry van or reefer trailers -- actual human beings. In some cases, the drivers involved may have been initially hoodwinked into participation in the schemes, though the red flags are what they are, and should be easy to spot for anyone recruited by a smuggling ring for the purpose.
For the entirety of fiscal year 2020, ending September 30, Chief Hudak said 1,400 people were caught being smuggled in tractor-trailers. Since October, in just a short three and a half months, 51 separate busts involved more than 1,600 people, a sizable increase in real numbers, in just a fourth of the time.

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