The network uses Mexican employees situated in Michoacan, Jalisco, Guanajuato, Puebla, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and other states to move Mexicans and migrants from Central and South America to the border, where U.S. citizens traffic the migrants into the United States.

The report, by the U.S. State Department, the Mexican National Migration Institute, and consular personnel from both nations, says the business of human trafficking earns groups like the Gringo Coyote Company some US8 billion per year.

Dep. Pascual Sigala Paez, from the Party of the Democratic Revolution, said the group, which takes its name from one of the Spanish terms to describe the guides who offer to take migrants across the border, was dedicated to trafficking adults as well as minors who are handed over to the "business" to take them to their parents or siblings already living in the United States.

Sigala, who provided the data of the report to EL UNIVERSAL, said the scope of this "mafia" was indicated by the arrest of 123 people for human trafficking at the main crossing between Tijuana and San Diego last year. Sigala said 95 percent of those arrested were U.S. citizens, many of whom are allegedly connected to the Gringo Coyote Company.

"These traffickers were arrested, in the majority of the cases, when they were transporting Mexican children," Sigala said, adding the report said some 3,500 children are deported from the United States every year.

The study says that corrupt border officials on both sides of the border are in the pay of the migrant traffickers. The report estimates that a third of the group's earnings go to paying off officials.

The report says the Gringo Coyote Company rose up after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when a group of U.S. citizens, some of whom are of Mexican descent, began a complex organization to traffic undocumented migrants.