Meta’s Latin America expansion ‘a boon to human smugglers’

Misinformation spread via Facebook and WhatsApp has contributed to the migrant influx at the US-Mexico border. “Facebook’s rapid expansion in Latin America … and its struggles to remove dangerous content have been a boon to human smugglers,” noted a report last year from the Tech Transparency Project watchdog group. “Smugglers used to advertise using word of mouth, reaching small groups of people – but now their reach is global and unlimited.” ‘Opened the market’ In downtown Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican border city known as a connection hub for migrants and smugglers, Al Jazeera met with a smuggler who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, for fear of retaliation from his cartel bosses. He lauded Meta’s expansion in Latin America, saying that WhatsApp and Facebook had “opened the market” to places he was unable to reach before. And although a White House spokesperson in February 2021 tried to discourage the migrant influx, saying “the vast majority of people will be turned away”, the number of migrants arriving at the border has continued to increase steadily, with border agents carrying out more than one million expulsions and deportations last year, according to the American Immigration Council.