Mexico & Central America

Regional Overview

Mexico and Central America form one of the world’s most active trafficking corridors. The region functions as a source, transit zone, and destination for trafficked persons; with victims moving northward toward the United States, southward into South America, and within and between countries in the region itself. The convergence of organized crime, endemic poverty, government corruption, and mass migration creates conditions in which trafficking flourishes at industrial scale.

The U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report has consistently identified Mexico as a Tier 2 country, indicating that the government does not fully meet minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts. Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have fluctuated between Tier 2 and the Tier 2 Watch List, reflecting persistent gaps in prosecution, protection, and prevention.

Mexico: Cartel-Controlled Trafficking

Mexican drug cartels have diversified into human trafficking as a major revenue stream, recognizing that human beings, unlike narcotics, can be sold repeatedly. The Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), Los Zetas, and Gulf Cartel all operate trafficking networks alongside their drug operations. The CJNG, in particular, has expanded its sex trafficking operations across Mexico, controlling networks that move victims from southern Mexico and Central America to cities along the U.S. border.

Cartels employ trafficking both as a direct profit center and as a tool of territorial control. In areas they dominate, cartels impose a “pimp tax” on independent sex workers, force women and girls into sexual servitude at cartel-controlled bars and brothels, and traffic migrants who cannot pay smuggling fees. The collapse of the distinction between drug trafficking and human trafficking organizations is a defining feature of the modern Mexican criminal landscape.

Los Zetas, originally formed by deserters from the Mexican military’s special forces, gained notoriety for their systematic use of trafficking as a weapon. In multiple documented cases, Zetas operatives intercepted buses carrying Central American migrants and forced the male passengers to fight each other to the death as gladiatorial entertainment, while women and girls were trafficked into sexual servitude. The 2010 San Fernando massacre, in which 72 migrants were murdered in Tamaulipas after refusing to work for the cartel, exposed the lethal intersection of migration and trafficking.

Tenancingo: The “Cradle of Pimps”

The small municipality of Tenancingo in the state of Tlaxcala has gained global notoriety as the center of an intergenerational sex trafficking culture. Families in Tenancingo have operated trafficking networks for decades, using a model in which young men are trained to recruit victims through feigned romantic relationships; a method known as the “lover boy” or padrote system.

Traffickers from Tenancingo recruit women and girls from impoverished rural communities across Mexico, as well as from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Victims are lured with promises of love and marriage, transported to urban areas or the United States, and then coerced into commercial sex through violence, threats against family members, and psychological manipulation. Once in the United States, victims are moved through networks in New York City, Atlanta, Houston, and other major cities.

Academic research by scholars including Sheldon Zhang and the Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH) has documented how Tenancingo’s trafficking economy is normalized within the community, with the proceeds of exploitation funding construction of homes and local businesses. The Mexican government has conducted operations in Tenancingo, but prosecutions remain rare relative to the scale of the activity.

The economic footprint of the Tenancingo trafficking model is visible in the town itself. Modest dwellings sit beside large, newly constructed houses built with proceeds from trafficking. Community members describe trafficking as “the family business, ” and social pressure to participate is intense. Young men who refuse to become padrotes may face ostracism. The normalization of trafficking as an economic activity, rather than a crime, is one of the most disturbing aspects of the Tenancingo phenomenon and raises fundamental questions about how trafficking becomes embedded in community economies.

U.S. federal investigations have dismantled several Tenancingo-based networks. In 2023, a federal court in New York sentenced members of the Granados-Rendon family to decades in prison for operating a sex trafficking ring that moved victims from Mexico through Queens, New York. The case demonstrated the transnational reach of Tenancingo networks and the severity of exploitation, with victims testifying about years of forced commercial sex and systematic violence.

Guatemala: Child Trafficking & Forced Labor

Guatemala is a source, transit, and destination country for trafficking, with particular vulnerability among its large indigenous Maya population. An estimated 60% of Guatemala’s population lives below the poverty line, and the country’s rural indigenous communities face extreme marginalization that traffickers exploit.

Child trafficking is a severe problem. Guatemalan children are trafficked for forced labor in agriculture (particularly sugar cane, coffee, and palm oil), domestic servitude, and street begging. Child sex trafficking is documented in Guatemala City, Antigua, and tourist destinations. The practice of “informal adoption”, in which children are sold or given to families outside the child welfare system, has been linked to trafficking and exploitation.

Guatemala’s position as a transit country means that Central American and South American migrants passing through face significant trafficking risks. Criminal organizations operating along the Guatemala–Mexico border exploit migrants, sometimes holding them for ransom, forcing them into labor, or trafficking them into commercial sex.

Guatemala’s international adoption system was historically linked to child trafficking, with babies and young children sold to foreign families through fraudulent processes. At its peak in the early 2000s, Guatemala had one of the highest per capita rates of international adoption in the world, and investigations revealed that many children had been stolen, purchased from impoverished mothers, or obtained through coercion. Guatemala suspended international adoptions in 2007 following pressure from the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, but underground markets for children persist.

The exploitation of Guatemalan agricultural workers is a significant trafficking concern both domestically and internationally. Guatemalan workers are trafficked into Mexican and U.S. agriculture through the H-2A visa program and informal recruitment networks. Within Guatemala, indigenous Maya children work in coffee, sugar cane, and cardamom production under conditions that constitute forced labor. The country’s Procuraduría General has established a specialized trafficking prosecution unit, but resources remain inadequate relative to the scale of the problem.

Honduras: Gang Recruitment & Exploitation

Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and the dominance of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 (M-18) gangs creates a trafficking ecosystem in which recruitment, coercion, and exploitation are inseparable from gang activity. Gangs forcibly recruit children; boys as soldiers, lookouts, and drug runners; girls for sexual exploitation and forced domestic labor within gang structures.

The threat of gang violence is itself a driver of migration, which in turn creates trafficking vulnerability. Families fleeing gang recruitment of their children may turn to smugglers who traffic them along the route to the United States. Honduran women and girls are particularly vulnerable to sex trafficking in Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States. The Honduran government’s anti-trafficking framework exists largely on paper, with minimal investigation, prosecution, or victim protection capacity.

El Salvador

El Salvador faces many of the same trafficking dynamics as Honduras, driven by gang violence, poverty, and migration. MS-13 and M-18 control significant territory within El Salvador and use forced recruitment, sexual exploitation, and forced labor as integral components of their operations. Girls in gang-controlled neighborhoods may be claimed as “property” by gang members, subjected to serial sexual violence, and killed if they attempt to escape.

The Salvadoran government’s 2022 state of emergency, which granted sweeping arrest powers to combat gangs, has had a mixed impact on trafficking. While gang activity has been significantly reduced, the mass incarceration campaign has also disrupted service provision for trafficking victims and raised concerns about due process for individuals, including trafficking victims, swept up in arrests.

Prior to the crackdown, El Salvador had one of the highest rates of child recruitment by armed groups in the Western Hemisphere. Boys who refused gang membership were murdered, and girls faced sexual violence as a tool of territorial control. The flow of unaccompanied Salvadoran minors to the United States, many of whom were fleeing forced gang recruitment that constitutes trafficking, was a major component of the 2014 border crisis and subsequent migration waves.

El Salvador’s anti-trafficking legal framework, enacted in 2014, criminalizes all forms of trafficking and established a specialized unit within the attorney general’s office. However, convictions have been few, fewer than 20 per year in most years, and victim identification and support services remain critically underfunded. The country’s focus on gang suppression through mass incarceration has not been accompanied by commensurate investment in addressing the trafficking that gangs perpetrate.

The Northern Triangle Migration Pipeline

Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, collectively known as the Northern Triangle, generate one of the world’s largest migration flows. An estimated 500,000 or more migrants from these countries transit Mexico annually, seeking to reach the United States. This migration pipeline is a trafficking conveyor belt.

Migrants face trafficking risks at every stage of the journey. Smugglers (coyotes) may traffic migrants who cannot pay their fees, selling them to agricultural operations, sex trafficking networks, or cartels. Women and girls migrating through Mexico face systematic sexual violence; advocacy organizations estimate that 60–80% of women and girls transiting Mexico experience sexual assault. The journey itself has been described as a “rape highway.”

The Mexican government’s immigration enforcement, pressured by the United States, often drives migrants into more remote and dangerous routes, increasing their dependence on smugglers and vulnerability to trafficking. Shelters along the migration route, operated by churches and NGOs, report widespread trafficking victimization among the populations they serve.

Maquiladora Labor Exploitation

Mexico’s maquiladora system, export-oriented factories concentrated along the U.S.–Mexico border, has been linked to labor trafficking and severe exploitation since the program’s expansion under NAFTA in 1994. Approximately 3,000 maquiladoras employ over 1.3 million workers, producing goods for export to the United States including electronics, automotive parts, textiles, and medical devices.

While not all maquiladora labor constitutes trafficking, documented abuses include: wages below subsistence level, compulsory overtime under threat of termination, restriction of movement, confiscation of identity documents, and pregnancy testing as a condition of employment. Workers recruited from southern Mexico and Central America are particularly vulnerable, as they may be held in debt bondage for recruitment and transportation fees.

The cities of Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana, Reynosa, and Matamoros host the largest concentrations of maquiladoras and also report among the highest rates of trafficking and gender-based violence in Mexico. The intersection of factory exploitation and sex trafficking in border cities has been extensively documented by researchers and advocacy organizations.

Femicide & the Trafficking Connection

Mexico records approximately 1,000 femicides per year, the murder of women and girls because of their gender, though advocacy organizations argue the true number is significantly higher. The connection between femicide and trafficking is well documented: women who attempt to escape trafficking situations are murdered, trafficking victims are killed when they are no longer profitable, and the culture of impunity that enables femicide also enables trafficking.

Ciudad Juárez became a global symbol of femicide in the 1990s, when hundreds of women, many of them young maquiladora workers, were murdered in patterns suggesting organized criminal involvement. Investigations revealed connections between the killings and sex trafficking networks. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in the landmark González et al. v. Mexico (“Cotton Field”) case in 2009 that the Mexican government had failed in its obligation to protect women from gender-based violence and trafficking.

The phrase “Ni una menos” (“Not one less”), which became a rallying cry for anti-femicide movements across Latin America, reflects growing public awareness of the violence against women that sustains trafficking systems in the region.

Government Responses & Gaps

Mexico enacted its General Law to Prevent, Sanction and Eradicate Crimes Related to Trafficking in Persons in 2012, establishing a comprehensive legal framework. However, implementation has been severely hampered by corruption, institutional weakness, and the overwhelming power of organized crime.

Between 2012 and 2022, Mexican federal and state authorities secured fewer than 200 trafficking convictions, despite estimates of hundreds of thousands of victims in the country. State-level anti-trafficking commissions exist in all 32 states but vary dramatically in capacity and commitment. Corruption within law enforcement and the judiciary enables traffickers to operate with near-total impunity in many jurisdictions.

Central American governments face similar challenges. Guatemala’s specialized trafficking prosecutor’s office has achieved some convictions but operates with minimal resources. Honduras and El Salvador lack dedicated trafficking courts or prosecution units, and victim services remain almost entirely dependent on international organizations and NGOs.

Child Trafficking Across the Region

Child trafficking is endemic across Mexico and Central America, taking multiple forms that are deeply embedded in the region’s social and economic structures. UNICEF estimates that hundreds of thousands of children are exploited across the region in forced labor, sexual exploitation, forced begging, domestic servitude, and recruitment by armed groups and criminal organizations.

In Mexico, children are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation in tourist destinations including Cancún, Acapulco, and Puerto Vallarta. The National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH) has documented child sex tourism as a growing industry, with offenders arriving primarily from the United States, Canada, and Europe. Children trafficked in Mexico’s commercial sex industry are disproportionately from indigenous communities and impoverished rural areas.

Street children across the region face acute trafficking risk. An estimated 100,000 children live on the streets of Guatemala City, Mexico City, Tegucigalpa, and San Salvador, where they are recruited for forced labor, drug trafficking, begging, and sexual exploitation. The absence of functioning child welfare systems in most Central American countries means these children have virtually no access to protection.

Corruption & Complicity

Corruption is the single greatest obstacle to anti-trafficking efforts in Mexico and Central America. Trafficking operations cannot function at the scale documented in this region without the complicity, active or passive, of state officials. Documented cases of corruption include police officers operating trafficking rings, immigration officials accepting bribes to allow trafficking victims to pass through checkpoints, prosecutors dismissing cases in exchange for payment, and politicians protecting trafficking operations in exchange for campaign contributions or direct payoffs.

In Mexico, the arrest of Genaro García Luna, the former Secretary of Public Security, the country’s top law enforcement official, on charges of accepting millions in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel illustrated the depth of state capture by criminal organizations. The trafficking networks that operate under cartel protection benefit from the same corrupt infrastructure that enables drug trafficking.

Guatemala’s International Commission against Impunity (CICIG), supported by the United Nations, achieved significant anti-corruption results before the Guatemalan government expelled it in 2019. The commission’s closure removed a critical check on the corruption that enables trafficking and signaled to traffickers that the political environment favored impunity.

Honduras ranks among the most corrupt countries in the Western Hemisphere, according to Transparency International. The 2022 extradition and conviction of former President Juan Orlando Hernández on drug trafficking charges in a U.S. federal court exposed the extent of state capture by criminal organizations at the highest levels of government; the same criminal organizations that operate trafficking networks.

Survivor Experiences & Support Gaps

Trafficking survivors across Mexico and Central America face enormous barriers to recovery. Victim identification rates are extremely low; the majority of trafficking victims are never identified by authorities. Those who are identified often encounter secondary victimization through inadequate support services, pressure to testify against traffickers without adequate protection, and stigma from their communities.

Shelters for trafficking victims in the region are overwhelmingly operated by NGOs and religious organizations rather than government agencies. Capacity is vastly insufficient: Mexico has fewer than 50 specialized trafficking shelters for a country of 130 million people. Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador each have fewer than 10. Many shelters operate without adequate funding, professional staff, or security measures to protect residents from retaliation by traffickers.

Reintegration is particularly challenging in communities where trafficking is normalized. Women who return to Tenancingo-area communities after being trafficked may face pressure to re-enter the trafficking system. Children who escape gang recruitment in the Northern Triangle often have no safe community to return to, as gangs maintain control over their neighborhoods. The absence of economic alternatives, legitimate employment that pays enough to survive, means that many survivors remain vulnerable to re-trafficking.

Indigenous & Afro-Descendant Vulnerability

Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations across Mexico and Central America face disproportionate trafficking vulnerability rooted in centuries of marginalization. In Guatemala, Maya communities in the highlands are primary source populations for both labor trafficking and child trafficking. In Mexico, indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Guerrero are targeted by recruiters who exploit language barriers, poverty, and geographic isolation.

The Garifuña (Afro-indigenous) communities along the Caribbean coast of Honduras and Guatemala face particular trafficking risks, driven by extreme poverty, discrimination, and encroachment on their traditional lands by agribusiness and development projects. Displacement from ancestral territories forces community members into urban areas where they lack social networks and economic opportunities, increasing vulnerability to exploitation.

Cultural practices in some indigenous communities, including early marriage and the sending of children to work in urban households, create conditions that traffickers exploit. These practices are themselves rooted in poverty and the absence of alternatives: families send children to cities hoping they will receive education and better opportunities, only to find them trapped in exploitative situations. Addressing these dynamics requires culturally sensitive approaches that engage indigenous leadership and address the structural poverty driving these practices.

The U.S.–Mexico Border Zone

The U.S.–Mexico border is one of the world’s most active trafficking zones. The 1,954-mile border runs through desert, mountains, and urban areas, creating a complex landscape in which trafficking, smuggling, and migration intersect. Border cities on the Mexican side, Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, and Matamoros, are simultaneously smuggling hubs, trafficking destinations, and sites of extreme violence.

The border zone trafficking economy includes: sex trafficking of Mexican and Central American women and girls in border city brothels and cantinas; labor trafficking of migrants held in stash houses awaiting border crossing; forced criminal activity including drug smuggling; and the exploitation of asylum seekers and returned migrants stranded in dangerous border cities. The U.S. “Remain in Mexico” policy (Migrant Protection Protocols), implemented in 2019, was criticized by anti-trafficking organizations for forcing asylum seekers to wait in precisely the border cities where trafficking risk is highest.

On the U.S. side of the border, trafficking follows migrants into the interior. Victims who cross the border with the assistance of smugglers may be held in debt bondage for their crossing fees, forced to work in agriculture, construction, or domestic service to pay off debts that are deliberately inflated to maintain control. The transfer from smuggling to trafficking often occurs seamlessly, as smuggling networks sell migrants to trafficking operations or convert smuggling debts into instruments of coercion.

Digital Recruitment & Technology

Social media and digital platforms have transformed trafficking recruitment across Mexico and Central America. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and TikTok are used by traffickers to identify and recruit victims, with social media replacing in-person recruitment as the primary contact method in many trafficking networks. WhatsApp, which is virtually universal in the region, is used to coordinate smuggling and trafficking logistics, negotiate prices, and maintain control over victims.

Traffickers use social media to post fraudulent job advertisements targeting young women, promising employment as models, waitresses, or nannies in the United States or Mexican resort cities. Once victims respond, they are lured into trafficking situations. The Tenancingo model has adapted to the digital age, with padrotes using social media to conduct the initial phases of “lover boy” recruitment before transitioning to in-person contact.

For Central American migrants, social media groups on Facebook and WhatsApp serve as platforms where smugglers advertise their services. These same platforms are used by traffickers posing as smugglers, or by smugglers who transition into trafficking when migrants cannot pay. The digital dimension of trafficking in the region complicates law enforcement efforts, as platforms may be hosted outside national jurisdictions and encrypted messaging prevents interception.

Mexico’s telecommunications infrastructure, including widespread mobile phone access even in impoverished communities, means that traffickers can reach potential victims in remote areas that were previously accessible only through in-person recruitment. This has expanded the geographic reach of trafficking networks while making them harder to detect.

International & U.S. Policy Impact

U.S. policy decisions have profound effects on trafficking dynamics in Mexico and Central America. Immigration enforcement policies, foreign aid levels, and diplomatic pressure all shape the trafficking landscape. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funds anti-trafficking programs across the region, but these programs have been subject to political fluctuations and funding cuts.

The Merida Initiative, launched in 2008, provided over $3 billion in security assistance to Mexico, including support for anti-trafficking efforts. Its successor, the Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities, continues bilateral cooperation but has been criticized for prioritizing security over the root causes of migration and trafficking. Central America’s Alliance for Prosperity, a U.S.-backed development initiative, sought to address the economic conditions driving migration and trafficking but achieved limited results before funding priorities shifted.

The annual U.S. TIP Report serves as a significant diplomatic tool, with tier rankings carrying both reputational consequences and the threat of sanctions. Mexico’s consistent Tier 2 placement reflects the gap between its legal framework and enforcement reality. The threat of downgrade to the Tier 2 Watch List has been used to pressure the Mexican government to increase prosecutions and improve victim services, with mixed results. Central American governments have responded to TIP Report pressure with legislative reforms but struggle with implementation due to institutional weakness and corruption.

The fundamental challenge of international engagement in the region is that trafficking is driven by structural conditions, poverty, inequality, corruption, gang violence, and demand in destination countries, that cannot be addressed through law enforcement alone. Without sustained investment in economic development, governance reform, and demand reduction in the United States, enforcement-focused approaches will continue to address symptoms rather than causes.

Climate change adds another dimension to the trafficking crisis in this region. Extreme weather events, hurricanes devastating Honduras and Guatemala, droughts drying up subsistence farming in the “dry corridor” of Central America, rising sea levels threatening coastal communities, are accelerating displacement and migration. The World Bank estimates that by 2050, 17 million people in Latin America could be forced to move due to climate change. Each wave of displacement creates new populations vulnerable to trafficking, suggesting that the crisis described in this chapter will deepen significantly in the decades ahead unless the structural drivers are addressed.

Mexico and Central America sit at the intersection of nearly every major driver of trafficking: extreme poverty, powerful organized crime, weak institutions, mass migration, demand in wealthy destination countries, and now climate change. The region’s trafficking crisis is not a problem that can be solved through any single intervention. It requires comprehensive, sustained, and coordinated action across borders; action that has, to date, been attempted only in fragments.