Mexican cartels are exploiting American teenagers by paying them $1K per head to traffic illegal immigrants

Maria Bartiromo shared exclusive photos of a pickup that crashed en route to Houston while jammed with more than dozen illegal aliens.

Mexican drug cartels are exploiting American teenagers into big paydays if they assist in the human trafficking crisis at the southern border – specifically paying them $1,000 per head to traffic illegal alien migrants to Texas' largest city, Fox Business has learned.

On Monday, "Mornings with Maria" host Maria Bartiromo shared exclusive photos of a pickup truck reportedly driven by one of those teenagers that had flipped over into a culvert while transporting 13 illegal aliens in its cab toward Houston. 

Bartiromo said some of the photos came from Jackson County Sheriff A.J. Louderback, whose jurisdiction sits about two-thirds of the way from the Rio Grande to Houston.

"You have these teenagers with cars back and forth from the border to Houston all day long," she said.

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She said the cartels are using the popular social media app TikTok to "entrap" youth as young as 15 into eagerly making large sums of money.

Money will not suffice for organizers of the latest massive migrant caravan that recently overran Mexican federal forces on its way north to Texas from Central America, which Bartiromo reported said as much in a statement directed at the White House.

"It's unclear what they want," she said. 

Aerial view of the beautiful downtown district of Houston, Texas, USA.

The host added that Biden again falsely claimed he has been to the Mexican border, when pressed on the illegal immigration crisis, while Fox News reported last week that Biden had only come in close proximity to the border in 2008 when he landed in El Paso to be motorcaded to a campaign event in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Louderback later joined Bartiromo and dubbed Biden's border strategy as the "Destroy America Plan" – in the vein of "Build Back Better" – and that his office and that of Texas DPS is overrun with cases of human smuggling and illegal border egress.

Biden is "empowering" the cartels to do things like hiring teenagers to help with their human trafficking, he added.

The lawman told Bartiromo the cartels are likely targeting the young driver demographic because they are the ones most likely to jump at an offer of quick cash:

"Tell me who would be able to withstand that… [versus] working at Whataburger for minimum wage."

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 19: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about the nation's economic recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the State Dining Room of the White House on July 19, 2021 in Washington, DC. Biden also reiterated his hope that Facebook wil (Photo by Drew Angerer  |   Karla Ann Cote/NurPhoto via Getty Images / Getty Images)

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Louderback said the teenager who apparently flipped his truck into the ditch is facing several charges including human smuggling for benefit – a second-degree felony in the state of Texas.

"Two of them in this truck were below 18 years of age. That’s two more felonies there. You’ve got the evading, gross negligence, child endangerment, all these filed against this one juvenile," he said, adding that the driver allegedly was unlicensed. "I don’t think it’s enough to deter this kid from continuing as a cartel operative."