They’re the Kardashians of the coyote world.
Migrant-smuggling “influencers” are cashing in on a dangerous, multibillion-dollar industry by brazenly advertising illegal transportation into the US — for more than $10,000 per person — with slickly produced TikTok videos, The Post has learned.
The cartel-linked human smugglers, known as coyotes in Spanish, post high-quality promo videos showing them escorting migrants across rivers and customers smiling inside secret “stash houses” once purportedly over the border.
The social media-savvy outlaws have public profiles on sites such as TikTok and YouTube, where they flaunt their schemes — which make a mockery of the US immigration system — under the noses of border protection officers.
Anyone can open their phone and with a few clicks talk to a coyote via their social media account and receive a quote for slipping an immigrant illegally into the US, The Post has found.
One alleged human smuggler told The Post he charges 180,000 Mexican pesos (around $10,500) to sneak a Mexican person into the US.
Prices depend on what country the migrant is from, according to Soy Xulen, whose YouTube handle is @ELINMIGRANTEAVENTURERO, which translates to “the migrant adventurer.”
Xulen’s footage has raked in nearly 13 million views and shows smugglers in camouflage slipping illegal immigrants over the border.
In one of his videos, border crossers in backpacks can be seen trekking along a dusty desert path followed by what appears to be a family crammed into the back of a vehicle.
Another shot, filmed in Juarez, shows the location of Border Patrol officers.
His footage also follows migrants on a raft crossing the Rio Grande, the river that separates Texas from Mexico and serves as the international boundary.
In the footage, shot in Texas’ Big Bend region, smugglers can be seen pulling the inflatable packed with migrants across the water with a safety line.
The footage is subtle, with captions claiming to simply be “documenting the migrant experience,” until users get in touch to discuss the price and details of the smuggling service.
“How about My people! I like to share moments captured on camera at the precise moment,” Xulen writes in a blurb on his YouTube channel, which has 55,000 subscribers.
“The simple reason is to share life and everything that we Latinos (legal, undocumented) and Americans have in the USA, so my dear friends, I hope it is to your liking,” he writes.
“For people who have that desire to know more about it … Here you find ADVENTURES OF AN IMMIGRANT. And the different ways of living in Usa.”
His account documents all parts of an illegal immigrant’s journey, including their arrival in the US — while failing to mention risks that have claimed the lives of thousands of migrants in recent years.
Another video shows a young boy, around 7 or 8 years old, giving a thumbs-up and flashing a grin as he arrives at a safe house.
Smugglers are also seen handing out fresh clothing and toiletries as migrants fill up on soda and stew inside a stash house.
Stash houses are usually in border cities like Laredo or El Paso, Texas, and serve as a holding spot until illegal immigrants can be picked up and transported farther into the US.
In another scene, a migrant is shown making it to his final destination, a Marathon gas station, where loved ones are waiting to pick him up. The excited relatives wait for the man with balloons, in a video which looks more like a homecoming than the conclusion of a deadly and illegal trek.
All of the videos are linked to SoyXulen, who claims to be an immigrant himself.
The account also includes contact information for “business inquiries,” as well as links to his other social media profiles.
A TikTok search using keywords such as “sueno americano” (“American dream”), “levanto” (“pick up”) and “inmigrantes” (“immigrants”) revealed dozens more accounts of suspected coyotes.
The reels included everything from footage of young migrants floating on a blow-up raft and inner tube across the Rio Grande to coyotes coming to a hole in a border fence and flashing stacks of cash in a moving vehicle, with hashtags such as #bienpagado (#wellpaid).
They often advertise the “adrenaline” of a border-crossing “adventure” — while hashtag-targeting people from countries like El Salvador and Honduras, who don’t have as many legal pathways into the country.
Neither TikTok nor YouTube responded to requests for comment from The Post.
TikTok has previously said it removes “any content found to violate our Community Guidelines on human exploitation.” YouTube also removes any flagged content that involves illegal activities.
The alleged smugglers also keep a close eye on US Border Patrol agents, documenting their locations and the seemingly endless cat-and-mouse game between US law enforcement and criminal organizations.
The number of people getting over the border without being apprehended is a huge problem, with over 1.5 million estimated to have made it across since Joe Biden became president, according to Department of Homeland Security data.
Us Border Patrol chief Raoul Ortiz has tweeted estimates of just over 7,500 gotaways — illegal immigrants known to have entered the country but not been caught — a week since the end of Title 42 measures on the border on May 15.
Smuggling influencer videos, which are difficult to remove from social media and regulate long-term, have spread like wildfire on TikTok and other social media in recent years, former Border Patrol Agent Thaddeus Cleveland told The Post.
The retired federal agent believes criminal smugglers are willing to risk showing themselves online because there’s so much money to be made.
“You’d think they’d have better operational security online, but they’ve been so successful that they are more and more brazen to brag about it and rub it on our faces,” he said. “For the most part, they’re probably making it [into the US].”
Xulen’s setup — where a simple social media query connects users with a smuggler — is common practice, US Customs and Border Protection sources said.
The operations are almost always linked to the cartels, which have an iron grip on smuggling people over the border and quickly squash competitors, the sources said.
Cartels bring in an estimated $13 billion a year as part of their illegal human cargo trade, according to the New York Times.
In their promotional videos, traffickers paint a rosy picture of what a migrant will actually experience and conveniently leave out the risk of being captured or dying at the border, being kept inside filthy and overcrowded stash houses or being forced into the back of sweltering 18-wheelers where migrants often die.
A year ago, 53 migrants died in San Antonio of heat exhaustion after they were locked in the back of a big rig with no air conditioning and no water for hours, in a chamber that reached 140 degrees, in what federal prosecutors call the deadliest human smuggling case in the nation’s history.
Two men who died in the big rig had paid for “VIP” smuggling packages that were supposed to keep them out of the very danger that claimed their lives.
In other cases, faux coyotes have duped vulnerable people by taking their money, then disappearing without escorting them across the border, or demanding more cash midway through the journey.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for busting smugglers in the US, often faces a manpower problem when going after social media smugglers, Cleveland added.
“There’s just so much out there; we are definitely outnumbered.”
The Post reported the @ELINMIGRANTEAVENTURERO account to federal authorities.
Additional reporting by Natalie O’Neill
