'Be ready in the morning': Inside the sprawling online industry selling human smuggling services

'Be ready in the morning': Inside the sprawling online industry selling human smuggling services

A silver Toyota minivan pulls into a bank parking lot in Toronto’s west end.

Two young Punjabi men step out and start looking around for their client, a woman they’ve been communicating with over the previous days through texts and calls.

She has agreed to pay them $4,000 to be smuggled south across the border into the United States.

The two men believe the woman is waiting for them inside the bank.

Speaking Punjabi, they message and call her, asking her to come outside and join them in the car to begin the journey.

But in reality, there is no woman waiting in the bank.

Instead, reporters from the Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) are observing the scene as part of a months-long investigation into a burgeoning industry o

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