CBS News is being criticized for an article that claims human smugglers are actually helping illegal immigrants by serving as tour guides for the journey to the U.S. southern border.

Smugglers promise immigrants that they will find a way for them to enter the United States illegally in exchange for hefty cash payments. In many high-profile cases, smugglers leave immigrants for dead rather than potentially be caught bringing them across the border. For example, in October 2017, ten immigrants were roasted to death in the back of a tractor-trailer that was being used as part of a human smuggling scheme. (RELATED: Truck Driver Pleads Guilty In Human Smuggling Operation That Cooked Immigrants Alive)

According to CBS News, however, human coyotes are “helping migrants survive Central America’s grueling Darien Gap jungle.”

“I helped a lot of people, particularly women with children,” smuggler Emerson Gonzalez Jimenez said. “Because many have passed through here and not made it.”

“Most people think we (smugglers) are bad,” Gonzalez Jimenez said. “But if a person needs to go from there to here, and can’t do it… and they tell me, ‘I’m going to pay you $5, $10, $20… to take me to whatever location.’ And if I didn’t have a job at the time… to me, that’s good.”

Conservatives attacked CBS for trying to put a positive spin on the people who routinely endanger the lives of vulnerable illegal immigrants. (RELATED: American Smugglers Endangered More Than 60 Illegal Aliens, Several Found Trapped In Tractor Trailers)

Among liberal activists and their allies in the mainstream media, there’s a reluctance to acknowledge the darker side of the migrant crisis—or even admit that it’s a crisis at all. Hence CBS’s portrayal of two migrant smugglers as humanitarians. @FDRLST https://t.co/6HObmF6UPn — John Daniel Davidson (@johnddavidson) April 1, 2019

Human Traffickers and the Value They Add to Society with Their Noble Service — Razor (@hale_razor) March 31, 2019

Finally lived long enough to get so hyper-woke about applauding illegal immigration that we got a sympathetic piece from the network news about how underappreciated human traffickers are. https://t.co/bSfyEmGijo — Esoteric Jeff (@EsotericCD) March 31, 2019

The iceberg helping passengers survive boredom during the Titanic’s tedious Atlantic crossing — The Golden Avalanche (@JPOMalley1) March 31, 2019

i was just thinking the immigration debate was missing a news article applauding the kinder, gentler side of human traffickers https://t.co/LEKRkt4OTF — T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) March 31, 2019

Ah, yes, to CBS, slavers, rapists and other cartel members fleecing illegals for a fortune and risking their lives, are the good guys, because they keep some of their product alive long enough to profit. Up next, the ‘brave’ captains of migrant boats traversing the Mediterranean? — Marc Evan Aupiais (@SACNSNew) March 31, 2019

Next up on@cbsnews “Heroin dealers are helping people sleep and forget about their problems.” https://t.co/jdhmILmUXi — Allen Covert (@THATAllenCovert) March 31, 2019

Among liberal activists and their allies in the mainstream media, there’s a reluctance to acknowledge the darker side of the migrant crisis—or even admit that it’s a crisis at all. Hence CBS’s portrayal of two migrant smugglers as humanitarians. @FDRLST https://t.co/6HObmF6UPn — John Daniel Davidson (@johnddavidson) April 1, 2019

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