- Human smuggling is the act of deliberately bringing someone into the country to evade customs and immigration laws in place.
- While there are laws in place for human trafficking, there are none in place for human smuggling.
- Video shows House Representatives Cam Cavitt and Gina Johnsen announcing plan to criminalize human smuggling.
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
House Republicans want to bring the focus on human smuggling from the southern border to our state lines.
"From January to April of this year, US Customs and Border Protections reports that there were already 8600 encounters with smugglers.”
State Representatives Cam Cavitt and Gina Johnsen announced their plan to criminalize human smuggling in Michigan Tuesday.
Human smuggling is the act of deliberately bringing someone into the country to evade customs and immigration laws in place.
Michigan is the third largest state with an international border, just behind Texas and Alaska.
The state already has human trafficking laws. However, human smuggling, which the Department of Homeland Security says is a gateway to trafficking, is not on the books.
In their plan, House Republicans want to criminalize alien smuggling, bringing in and attempting to bring in unauthorized people into the state, the domestic transportation of people moving into the state, harboring illegal immigrants, and the act of conspiracy of aiding and abetting.
This will focus on giving law enforcement and state prosecutors the ability to work beyond the federal government.
"We need the tools for our law enforcement to do that, to protect our citizens," Representative Cavitt said.
Most importantly, Representative Johnsen says this plan will protect people coming from the border facing dangerous conditions.
"Their [smugglers] customers have no recourse when they are harmed, abandoned in the smuggling process, or worse abused, kidnapped or forced into labor by predators posing as smugglers who had no intention of gaining them access to the United States."
The plan was proposed in the house Tuesday and has a long way to go before it becomes enacted.
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