Cartel Human Trafficking: Tactics, Scale, and U.S. Enforcement

Cartel human trafficking refers to the sex trafficking, forced labor, and forced-criminality operations run by Mexican and allied transnational criminal organizations, which have turned migrant smuggling and the exploitation of vulnerable people into a revenue stream alongside the drug trade. The Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) dominate, joined by the Gulf Cartel, the Northeast Cartel, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, and the Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua. Together they exploit migrants, women, and children across Mexico, Central America, and the United States, and both governments are now prosecuting these operations under trafficking, racketeering, and, more recently, terrorism statutes.

Which Cartels Are Involved

The two dominant organizations are the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG, which together control most smuggling routes along the U.S.-Mexico border and maintain operations in roughly forty countries.¹ The DEA’s 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment describes both as transnational criminal organizations that profit from migrant smuggling, sex trafficking, and forced labor in addition to narcotics.²

Beyond those two, the Gulf Cartel traffics drugs and migrants into Texas, the Northeast Cartel engages in human smuggling alongside kidnapping and torture, and La Nueva Familia Michoacana combines smuggling with extortion.¹ A study by the Mexican Senate’s Belisario Domínguez Institute identified 47 distinct criminal groups involved in human trafficking across Mexico City and 17 other states.³

Tren de Aragua (TdA), a Venezuelan organization, is a significant newer player. The 2025 U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report places TdA alongside Sinaloa and CJNG as groups that control smuggling routes and exploit migrants.⁴ Federal prosecutors have charged TdA members with racketeering, sex trafficking, and murder in multiple jurisdictions.

How Cartels Traffic People

From Smuggling to Exploitation

The core dynamic is the transition from smuggling to exploitation. Migrants pay smugglers to help them cross the border, often going into debt to do so. Cartels then exploit that debt: migrants who cannot pay are kidnapped and held for ransom, forced to contact their families for wire transfers, or compelled into labor or sex work to pay off what they owe.⁴ Sinaloa, CJNG, and Tren de Aragua all control key transit corridors. Sinaloa and CJNG also impose a “piso,” a tax on independent smugglers operating in their zones, turning migrant smuggling into a revenue stream even when the cartel doesn’t run the logistics itself.²

Sex Trafficking

Cartel-linked sex trafficking takes multiple forms. Some victims are kidnapped outright or coerced through blackmail and intimidation. Others are recruited through seduction and false promises. The state of Tlaxcala is the most documented example: family-run networks there have been recruiting girls for decades, often through feigned romantic relationships, and moving them into sex trafficking in Mexican cities or the United States.⁵ Mexico’s Attorney General’s organized crime unit has linked Tlaxcala trafficking families to the Zetas, La Familia Michoacana, the Knights Templar, and the Gulf Cartel.⁶ The Granados family, based in Tenancingo, Tlaxcala, ran a ring from 1998 to 2011 that lured women to the United States with promises of marriage and then forced them into prostitution in New York City through violence and threats. Raul Granados-Rendon was sentenced to eight years in federal prison and ordered to pay over $1.3 million in restitution.⁷

Tren de Aragua members have been charged in similar schemes. In February 2025, eight Venezuelan nationals with TdA ties were indicted in Tennessee for running a sex trafficking operation out of Nashville motels, recruiting women from impoverished areas of South and Central America and using the gang’s reputation for violence to keep victims compliant.⁸ A 38-count racketeering and sex trafficking indictment unsealed in February 2026 charged 27 members of Anti-Tren, a TdA splinter faction, with smuggling Venezuelans into the U.S. and forcing young women into commercial sex to pay off smuggling debts.⁹

Forced Labor and Forced Criminality

Cartel-linked forced labor extends well beyond the sex trade. The 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report documents forced labor in agriculture (vegetables, coffee, sugar, tobacco), domestic service, fishing, livestock herding, manufacturing, mining, food processing, construction, tourism, begging, and street vending. In agriculture, informal recruiters called “enganchadores” use fraudulent promises and unlawful fees to trap day laborers and their children in debt bondage, compelling them to work under threats of violence and nonpayment.⁴

Forced criminality is another major category. Cartels compel adults and children alike to produce, cultivate, transport, and sell drugs, and to carry out extortion, arms trafficking, robbery, and alien smuggling. Children living in cartel-controlled territories face particularly high risks of forced recruitment into these roles.⁴

One especially grim example involves CJNG’s call-center operations in Jalisco. The cartel runs “boiler rooms” conducting timeshare fraud against American and Canadian citizens. Workers recruited under false pretenses for what they believe are legitimate jobs are held through violence and threats of murder. In June 2023, authorities confirmed that at least eight young workers were killed at a cartel-operated call center after attempting to quit.¹⁰ The FBI has estimated that nearly 6,000 U.S. victims lost roughly $350 million to these schemes between 2019 and 2024, and the Treasury Department has sanctioned over 90 individuals and entities linked to the operation.¹¹

Exploitation of Unaccompanied Children

Criminal organizations exploit the U.S. Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program by submitting fraudulent sponsorship applications using aliases, fake birth certificates, and fabricated family relationships to gain custody of minors after they enter the country. Once released, children are vulnerable to labor exploitation, sex trafficking, and abuse. In one case, Juan Tiul Xi pleaded guilty to gaining custody of a child by posing as the child’s brother and then sexually abusing the child; he received eight years in state prison plus 26 months in federal prison.¹²

Cartel operatives also coach children during transit to memorize scripted details, including fake sponsor names and addresses, and alter official documents to disguise identities and ages. According to Senate testimony, roughly 70 percent of sponsor applications reviewed in audits contained fraudulent information or falsified documents, and more than 300,000 UACs remain unaccounted for after their release from federal custody.¹³

Digital Recruitment

Traffickers increasingly use social media and dating platforms to find and recruit victims. The FBI has documented traffickers monitoring platforms for individuals posting about financial hardships or personal problems, then posing as romantic partners, modeling agents, or legitimate employers to build trust before coercing victims into meeting in person.¹⁴ Facebook and TikTok have been cited by law enforcement as platforms where cartels recruit Americans, including teenagers, to help with smuggling.¹⁵ In Mexico, the 2025 TIP Report notes that traffickers use video games, dating apps, and artificial intelligence to generate deepfake images of children as a coercion tool.⁵

Scale and Geography

The 2025 U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report placed Mexico on the Tier 2 watch list and documented 860 trafficking victims identified in 2024, including 343 in sex trafficking, 75 in forced labor, and 442 in unspecified forms of exploitation. Among those, 49 were foreign nationals from Cuba, Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, the United States, and Guatemala.⁵ These figures almost certainly undercount the problem, because Mexican authorities rely largely on reactive complaints rather than proactive screening of vulnerable populations like migrants.

Trafficking is concentrated along border corridors and tourism hubs, including Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Cancún, Tapachula, Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta, and Mexico City. The Mexican Senate’s report found that criminal groups pay between $1,300 and $4,400 to police to freeze investigations, and approximately $44,000 to municipal authorities to halt enforcement operations entirely.³

U.S. Enforcement

Joint Task Force Alpha and the September Surge

Joint Task Force Alpha (JTFA), a partnership between the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, is the primary federal vehicle for prosecuting cartel-linked human smuggling and trafficking. As of September 2025, JTFA had produced over 410 arrests of leaders and facilitators, more than 355 U.S. convictions, and more than 305 significant prison sentences. Recent results include life sentences for two defendants responsible for a 2022 San Antonio smuggling tragedy that killed 53 people, and the indictment of a Mexican national for providing grenades to CJNG as material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.¹⁶

In January 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14159, directing the creation of Homeland Security Task Forces in every U.S. state to target cartels and transnational criminal organizations. A nationwide “September Surge” launched in August 2025 conducted 400 operations in 43 days, resulting in 3,266 arrests, including 1,041 Sinaloa Cartel members, 856 CJNG members, 641 MS-13 members, and 456 Tren de Aragua members. Agents seized 1,067 weapons, over $3.25 million in currency, and roughly 91 metric tons of narcotics.¹⁷

Foreign Terrorist Organization Designations

A major policy shift came with Executive Order 14157 in January 2025, which established a process for the Secretary of State to designate international drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. CJNG received the FTO designation on February 20, 2025.¹⁸ The designation gives prosecutors access to material support statutes, which carry severe penalties and make it a crime to provide resources or services to the designated organization.¹⁹ Those statutes have already been applied: in the CJNG timeshare fraud case, defendants face material support charges, and in a December 2025 indictment, TdA leader Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores was charged with racketeering conspiracy alongside terrorism offenses. He remains at large, with a $5 million State Department reward for information leading to his arrest.²⁰

DHS Center for Countering Human Trafficking

Within DHS, the Center for Countering Human Trafficking supports Homeland Security Investigations with intelligence, funding, and expertise. In fiscal year 2024, HSI initiated 1,686 criminal investigations into sex trafficking and forced labor, resulting in 2,545 arrests. The CCHT directly supported 246 of those investigations.²¹

The Laws Being Used

United States

The primary federal law is the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), which criminalizes forced labor, involuntary servitude, and sex trafficking and mandates restitution for victims. A 2003 reauthorization added human trafficking as a predicate offense under RICO, enabling prosecutors to pursue trafficking as part of a broader pattern of organized crime. A 2008 amendment imposed liability on anyone who knowingly benefits financially from a trafficking venture. The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015 allowed prosecution of buyers who solicit sex from trafficking victims and authorized forfeiture of any asset traceable to trafficking proceeds.²²

The FTO designations add another layer. The material support statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, makes it a federal crime to provide resources, personnel, or services to a designated terrorist organization, giving prosecutors additional charges to stack alongside trafficking and racketeering counts.¹⁹ In the CJNG timeshare fraud case, defendants face material support charges carrying up to 20 years per count on top of wire fraud and money laundering charges.¹⁸

Mexico

Mexico’s 2012 anti-trafficking law criminalizes both sex and labor trafficking. Penalties range from five to 30 years for sex trafficking and five to 20 years for labor trafficking, with aggravating factors potentially pushing sentences as high as 40 years. Thirty-one of 32 states have specialized anti-trafficking prosecutors, and a 2019 asset forfeiture law allows the seizure of traffickers’ property.²³

Mexico reported 661 new trafficking investigations in 2024 and secured 98 convictions, down from 182 convictions in 2023 at the federal and state level combined. Notable sentences include a 33-year prison term for a former Tlaxcala police officer convicted of sex trafficking and Chihuahua’s first-ever forced labor conviction, at 10 years.⁵

In practice, U.S. reviewers have identified deep structural problems. The Mexican government lacks a unified system to track anti-trafficking data, producing unreliable and sometimes duplicated statistics. Corruption remains pervasive; officials have been documented colluding with criminal groups to facilitate kidnapping and ransom schemes, and no officials were prosecuted for complicity in trafficking during the most recent reporting period. Prosecutor offices in rural, Indigenous, and Afro-Mexican communities are severely understaffed. Victim services remain inadequate, particularly for men, forced labor victims, and those outside urban areas, and government shelters have been criticized for restricting victims’ movement in ways that re-traumatize them.²³

1
Council on Foreign Relations. Mexico’s Long War: Drugs, Crime, and the Cartels
2
Drug Enforcement Administration. 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment
3
InSight Crime. Nearly 50 Crime Groups Involved in Human Trafficking in Mexico
4
U.S. Embassy Mexico. 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report: Mexico
5
U.S. Department of State. 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report: Mexico
6
InSight Crime. Human Trafficking and Drug Cartels in Mexico
7
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Member of Mexican Sex Trafficking Ring Sentenced to 8 Years
8
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 8 Venezuelan Illegal Aliens With Ties to Tren de Aragua Charged
9
U.S. Department of Justice. Twenty-Seven Members and Associates of Tren de Aragua Splinter Faction Charged
10
CBS News. U.S. Sanctions Drug Cartel Associates Targeting Americans in Timeshare Scam
11
U.S. Department of the Treasury. Treasury Targets CJNG Timeshare Fraud Network
12
U.S. Department of Justice. Three Illegal Aliens From Guatemala Indicted for Crimes Related to Unaccompanied Alien Children
13
U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. QFR Responses: Hopper
14
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center. Human Trafficking Public Service Announcement
15
Rep. Ciscomani. Ciscomani Introduces Bill to Combat Cartel Recruitment
16
U.S. Department of Justice. Department of Justice Announces Significant Enforcement and Expansion Efforts to Dismantle Smuggling Networks
17
U.S. Department of Justice. Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security Recognize National Human Trafficking Prevention Month
18
U.S. Department of Justice. Senior Member of Mexican Cartel Indicted for Wire Fraud, Money Laundering, and Terrorism
19
The White House. 2026 National Drug Control Strategy
20
Courthouse News Service. Feds Charge Tren de Aragua Leader on Terrorism, Drug, Gun Offenses
21
NIWAP at American University. DHS Center for Countering Human Trafficking FY2024 Annual Report
22
U.S. Department of Justice. Key Legislation
23
U.S. Department of State. 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report: Mexico