For nearly 15 years, InSight Crime has been investigating the main security threat in the Americas: organized crime. It is a job that, done properly, must be done in the field.

Our team, spread across Latin America and the United States, has visited more than 30 countries and traveled to the most remote corners of the region where organized crime has taken root.

From the triple border between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, we have documented major drug trafficking routes to Europe. Throughout the Amazon, InSight Crime has tracked the drivers of deforestation and biodiversity loss. Our investigators have traveled through one of the areas most affected by the forest fires that have ravaged the Chiquitania forest in the Bolivian department of Santa Cruz. In Colombia, we have visited hundreds of municipalities traditionally affected by the armed conflict and the presence of criminal economies, in order to shed light on the challenges for peace building in these territories.

On the border between Guatemala and Mexico, our team has spent nearly two weeks accompanying the operations that a group of park rangers have undertaken against timber traffickers plundering the Mayan jungle. InSight Crime has also reported from the US-Mexico border, where the scale of migration has added a new line to the revenues of criminal groups.

On the ground, we spoke to communities, social leaders, civil society representatives, victims, security and government officials, and even members of criminal groups. Including the voices of all types of actors allows us to put together all the pieces of the puzzle and reveal organized crime’s modus operandi and its many impacts in the region.

Visiting these places, where organized crime operates hand in hand with corruption and violence, requires rigorous planning to mitigate all the risks that can arise. Before heading to the field, we create strict security protocols designed to protect the InSight Crime team and our sources on the ground.

Our work, in addition to being high-risk, is costly. Support our mission to investigate organized crime.

Learn more about our investigations here.