EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The road from Central America to the U.S. border is paved with dangers for vulnerable migrants often traveling with children.

Those dangers are not confined to rugged terrain like mountains, jungles and large bodies of water; they also include individuals taking advantage of men and boys for their labor and women for domestic work and sexual exploitation.

The perpetrators are not always members of criminal gangs carrying guns and masking their faces, but often other migrants who befriend you or were supposed to protect you, according to a Costa Rican think-tank researching the mass movement of people through the region.

“The evidence is that it’s mostly family and friends because those are the people we trust,” said U.S.-based anthropologist and migration enforcement scholar Gabriella Sanchez. “Few are contacted online or in chats.”

Other obstacles on the way north include biases and discrimination from locals, the threat posed by sometimes corrupt law enforcement and a shortage of legislation in Central American countries aimed at protecting migrants, she said.

Women of color from South America face discrimination, and women from Venezuela and Colombia often find hostility from Central American wives afraid they will go after their husbands. Transgender women passing through are victims of verbal and other forms of violence, Sanchez said.

She spoke at a Tuesday online conference on organized crime and gender violence against migrants sponsored by FLACSO, a nonprofit in Costa Rica cofounded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Research shows transnational criminal organizations have a limited presence in the region, but it is local gangs that prey on migrants passing through. Though documenting crimes against migrants is a challenge because many don’t report them, researchers estimate women are most often victims of abuse and that labor exploitation is just as common as sexual exploitation.

Lack of asylum, lack of visas forces migrants to take unlawful paths

Researchers said people trying to find a better life in the United States choose unauthorized paths due to lack of legal avenues to migrate.

“It is hard to migrate legally,” Sanchez said. “People are unfamiliar with the requirements or how to go about” getting the required paperwork.

Limited schooling means limited chances of getting approved; some may not have access to government documents because they have never left their rural communities. In many disadvantaged enclaves of Latin America, young people feel pressured to economically contribute to their families, so they see migrating to the United States as a must.

They find that people will try to take advantage of them along the 2,000-mile journey. Still, they try to remain invisible even to authorities who might help them out of a jam. “It’s not that people don’t know they are being exploited. They believe the laws and the system do not protect them” and may prevent them from reaching their goal, Sanchez said.

In places like the Darien Gap – a jungle between Panama and Colombia – migrant exploitation takes many forms. It starts with the demand for a transit fee, but it can turn into sexual exploitation or, more often, labor exploitation, she said.

Women and men may be forced to work in fields or in migrants stash houses; boys may be recruited to sicariato – enforcers for the criminal gangs.

Local residents, particularly in disadvantaged communities, might also see the migrants as a source of extra income and squeeze every cent out of them. Others often are judgmental.

“They may say things like, ‘(The women) asked for it,’ or ‘They just come here to take,’ or ‘The women from this or that country are …’” Sanchez said. “We talk about education campaigns (on behalf of migrants), but they will not work if we do not address our own biases first.”

FLASCO plans future online conferences to highlight the challenges migrants continue to face, even now that migration to the United States has slowed down due to heightened border enforcement and limited asylum options. Those limitations mean those still intent on migrating must use irregular paths and place themselves at greater risk of harm and exploitation.