Let's see if I have this straight: It's OK to traffic in human beings and to recklessly endanger people for a profit, to willfully misinform in a way that causes death, because it's been done before?

How many travelled on wooden sailboats boats, fighting storms, bad food, and disease, only to arrive in the new world and face storms, bad food, disease, and angry indians.

Did their travel agents deliberately send them there with bad information and no equipment, then pocket the profits and disappear?

Re: the Donner Party. The Perilous Journey of the Donner Party by Marian Calabro explains the episode very well. They got advice not to take the short cut and decided not to take the advice. Their guides didn't take their money, send them into the Sierras telling them it would take a day to cross, wave goodbye and disappear. Several rescue parties, all hampered by the weather, were sent after the Donner wagon train.

To contrast with this situation: One truck with a jug of water could have rescued this woman, but nobody knew she was there because her passage through the American West was brokered by a creep who didn't want to bother about her and sure doesn't want to be identified. It would be very bad for business.

You bet he's a vicious underground capitalist. He's vicious because he turns a profit on other people's misery. He's underground because what he's doing is in violation of the law and done in secret. He's a capitalist because he's selling his services in the free underground market in illegal workers. "Capitalist" is the noun here. The adjectives only define what this particular class of capitalists are doing.

Regards--
Mary Anne