FinCEN Alert on Human Smuggling Along the Southwest Border of the United States (FIN-2023-Alert001)

FIN-2023-Alert001 January 13, 2023
FinCEN Alert on Human Smuggling along the Southwest Border of the United States

1. The SW border consists of the 1,954-mile border area along Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California.
2. See 8 U.S.C. § 1324. See also U.S. Department of State, “Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling: Understanding
   the Difference,” (Understanding the Difference) (June 27, 2017).
3. See U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Press Release, “DHS Announces Operation to Target Criminal
   Smuggling Organizations,” (April 27, 2021). See also U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury), “National Money Laundering Risk Assessment,” (February 2022), at p. 27.
4. See FinCEN Advisory, “Supplemental Advisory on Identifying and Reporting Human Trafficking and Related
   Activity,” (2020 Advisory) (October 15, 2020) and FinCEN Advisory, “Guidance on Recognizing Activity that May be Associated with Human Smuggling and Human Trafficking – Financial Red Flags,” (2014 Advisory) (September 11, 2014).
5. The U.S. Government has established several initiatives to combat human smuggling and human trafficking. This
   includes an unprecedented interagency effort launched in June 2022 to disrupt and dismantle human smuggling networks. See DHS, “FACT SHEET: DHS Leads First-of-Its-Kind Campaign of Unprecedented Scale to Foil Human Smuggling Networks,” (DHS Human Smuggling Fact Sheet) (June 9, 2022) and “FACT SHEET: Counter Human Smuggler Campaign Update” (October 6, 2022). The interagency effort includes actions taken by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Joint Task Force Alpha; DHS’s Operation Sentinel and Operation Expanded Impact; the Treasury, and the Intelligence Community. Other U.S. Government initiatives include the White House’s National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking (December 2021); the DOJ’s National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking, and the creation the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, which is a joint declaration from the participants of the Ninth Summit of the Americas that seeks to mobilize the entire region around bold actions that will transform the approach to managing migration in the Americas. See DOJ Press Release, “Attorney General Announces Initiatives to Combat Human Smuggling and Trafficking and to Fight Corruption in Central America,” (June 27, 2021); DHS Press Release, “DHS Announces Operation to Target Criminal Smuggling Organizations,” (April 27, 2021); White House, The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is issuing this alert to better aid financial institutions in the detection of financial activity related to human smuggling along the U.S. southwest border (“SW border”).1 Human smugglers engage in the crime of transporting people across international borders through deliberate evasion of immigration laws, often for financial benefit.2 Human smuggling can endanger lives and have devastating consequences because criminal organizations involved in human smuggling value profit over human life.3 This alert builds upon FinCEN’s previous 2014 and 2020 human smuggling and human trafficking advisories,4