The Associated Press

MESA - Human smugglers have built sophisticated criminal enterprises generating an estimated $2.5 billion annually through their Arizona operations alone, authorities say.
Working in league with Mexican drug cartels, human smuggling kingpins have set up networks of drivers, warehouse operators, distribution specialists and enforcers to move their loads from northern Sonora through the Phoenix metropolitan area and to their final destinations throughout the United States.
The smugglers, or "coyotes," call the immigrants "pollos" - chickens - human cargo without value beyond what it can bring on the open market, the East Valley Tribune reported in a series on the human smuggling industry.
"The people we are dealing with are well-organized, very well-armed, and apparently will stop at nothing to maximize their profit from human beings. That includes examples of severe brutality and murder. It makes the drug business look almost good by comparison," said Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, whose agency has gone after the money generated by human smuggling rings.
Police and federal immigration agents on the American side of the border acknowledge they don't know much about the inner workings of the human smuggling organizations, particularly about their upper echelons in Mexico.
Though hundreds employed in the human smuggling industry have been prosecuted in Arizona, the defendants are typically low-level drivers and drop house guards, the hired help who are usually not part of the core organization and know little or nothing about their bosses or how they operate.
Human smuggling rings are organized along the same lines as traditional Mexican drug cartels.
The top bosses are based in Mexico, where they operate openly, relatively safe from American police and prosecutors, authorities said.
Federal immigration agents responded to 163 drop houses in the Phoenix metro area last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.