Smugglers and Scammers Use TikTok to Target Migrants

The TikTok video starts like most other travel snaps on the platform do, with selfie shots showing the user* and his companions sitting on a plane and walking through the airport.

But unlike the highly curated images of hotels and tourist attractions typical of this genre on TikTok, the video quickly takes an uncharacteristic turn, showing the user sleeping in camps, at one point traveling by horseback and ultimately scaling what he calls “la famosa frontera de la muerte” or “the famous border of death” between the US and Mexico.

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“We are ready to climb the wall and run like deer,” he narrates in Spanish over dark images that appear to show him and his companions climbing the border wall. “Run, buddy run, or immigration will catch you,” he later says.

The video, which appears to document one young man’s journey from Ecuador to America, has been saved 10,000 times, has more than 170,000 likes and nearly 2,500 comments – the vast majority of which are from people asking him for more information. “How much did you spend and when did you do it?,” one asks.

“Viajes a USA” or “Travel to the US.” That’s all you have to search to find a not-so-hidden corner of TikTok largely populated by videos and posts about migration, specifically from Latin America to the US.

Some of the posts, like the one from the user from Ecuador, appear to be from people documenting their own migrant journeys. But many purport to offer services and advice for people seeking to immigrate from countries including Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador and Honduras.

It’s hard to tell which of these posts are shared by real “coyotes” or human smugglers, and which are scams. In either case, there are risks of deep harm, and experts worry that these videos are spreading on the platform largely unchecked.

TikTok says it “strictly prohibits this content”, though the company did not specify whether that includes posts detailing people’s migration in addition to videos offering to help people cross the US-Mexico border.

“TikTok would immediately remove it from our platform and ban the account,” said TikTok spokesperson AB Obi-Okoye. “We use a combination of people and technology to protect our community and partner with intelligence firms in this area to further bolster our defenses.”

But typing in “viajes” into the TikTok search bar alone will surface suggestions like “viajes seguros a USA” or “viajes a USA garantizado,” which mean “travel safely to the US” or “travel to the US guaranteed.”

The posts offering services are usually simple. They often include hazy footage of a journey or a US cityscape, typically overlaid with a message that seeks to assure users the service is not a scam. Some posts go as far as to show videos and pictures of people who have supposedly successfully crossed with the help of those behind the account.

Usually, the videos don’t include many details and instead direct users to reach out to the account over private message or WhatsApp.

Many of the accounts don’t explicitly advertise their services as illegal, but strongly imply they help people without visas or documents across the border. Others are less subtle: one account posted a video with a picture of the American and Ecuadorian flag, the text over it reading “viajes seguros y sin estafas” or “travel safely and no scam.” Playing in the background is the song “El Illegal” by Ecuadorian singer, Bayron Caicedo.

Quantifying the proliferation of these type of posts on TikTok is difficult because the platform does not provide external tools that allow researchers to audit or analyze its data, unlike companies like Twitter and Meta.

The Guardian shared eight examples of posts advertising services to ferry people across the border and Obi-Okoye said the company took them down. Still, dozens of similar videos pop up when searching for these terms, including some that were posted in the last week.

The videos the Guardian reviewed show that TikTok has started to play a more critical role in the spread of posts targeting migrants than what researchers initially observed.

Studies on human smugglers’ use of social media by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), the research arm of watchdog group the Campaign for Accountability, concluded that TikTok initially was primarily utilized as a video creation platform, while Facebook was the platform of choice for these organizations to recruit clients. Facebook groups and posts from people representing themselves as coyotes would include videos created on and then downloaded from TikTok, but the video app was less frequently used by migrants to engage directly with the services.

“Human smugglers that appeared to be connected to cartels were reposting TikTok videos to Facebook groups for migrants essentially laying out their journey to prove that they were in fact taking people across this route,” said Katie Paul, the director of TTP. “It’s free advertisement for their services, essentially.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/22/tiktok-coyotes-scammers-migrants-american-dream-revealed

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