Many Latino migrants are being raped by the cartel-affiliated coyotes

The New York Times has admitted that many Latino migrants are being raped by the cartel-affiliated coyotes who traffick them to jobs in Democratic-run cities.

 The stories are many, and yet all too similar. Undocumented women making their way into American border towns have been beaten for disobeying smugglers, impregnated by strangers, coerced into prostitution, shackled to beds and trees and — in at least a handful of cases — bound with duct tape, rope or handcuffs.

 For weeks, a 36-year-old mother of three, was in a locked room, the cartel-affiliated coyotes she had paid to get her safely to the United States drugged her with pills and cocaine, refusing to let her out even to bathe.

The huge scale of rape is exactly why it is immoral for us to continue with these catch-and-release policies which encourage people to make this dangerous journey.

Those policies are protected by Democrats and by GOP groups, each of which has their own incentive to encourage the migration of workers. 

President Trump has used the threat faced by migrant women to make his case for a border wall. “One in three women are sexually assaulted on the dangerous trek up through Mexico,” he said in January — an estimate that appears to have originated from some limited surveys, one of them by Doctors Without Borders, of women traveling through Mexico.

 Rape of migrants is so common that some women and girls plan for it, taking or bringing contraception, or they may be required to take it by smugglers^. A PBS NewsHour story about sexual assault of female migrants interviewed a pharmacist in Altar in Sonora, who said that the town is one of the last stops for someone about to cross the border, and that in the pharmacy she frequently receives the same question: "What can I do in case I'm raped, and I don't want to get pregnant.

 Cases of abuses are rarely reported or prosecuted, and data about these crimes is difficult to acquire or assess The newspaper La Jornada surveyed women attempting to migrate while they were in Mexican border cities. 30% said coyotes forced them to have sex as payment. Because many of the offenses involve people in power or connected to organized crime, many women also fear retaliation for speaking up