“Trucking is just like drug dealing. You have your dealer, you have your customer,” Bambi, a long-haul trucker from Arkansas, said at a trucking show in Dallas. “This is a legal hustle.”
But at truck stops, on Craigslist, and through word of mouth, commercial truck drivers are often asked to take that hustle off the books. If you’re cash-strapped, as many long-haul truckers in the U.S. today are, smuggling can be an enticing way to earn quick money. But what happens when you get caught? What happens when your cargo dies?
This project examines the stories of commercial truckers who moonlight smuggling undocumented migrants through Texas. It excavates, in particular, the case behind a 2017 smuggling tragedy and examines the life of the driver held responsible for it. The project is a window into the stakes and costs of movement and the business of migration, not just in the Americas, but also globally, where a trucker behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler is to Interstate 35 what smugglers manning speedboats are to the Aegean.
