The future of Humberto Cruz, one of the San Diego Padres’ top pitching prospects, has become clouded in a matter of months. In November, he pleaded guilty to participating in a human smuggling operation in Arizona and then self-deported to his native Mexico, putting his budding Major League Baseball career on hold. His case is the latest to highlight the complex operations of human smuggling networks, operated by so-called coyotes, which in recent years have been shown to recruit all kinds of people — youngsters, mothers, military personnel, and even the son of a popular singer — to circumvent increasingly stringent border security controls.

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