Writes Zeus, Headline Diplomat eMagazine, LUDCI.eu
Slowly and over the years, as northern and Latin American governments tighten their grips on trafficking, organized criminals who once had oil theft and drug trafficking as their main product lines are mutating their business strategy, according to several reports.
Drug cartels from Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela, who also have their eyes on the American and European markets, are increasingly drafting in children and young people into their operational plans, exploiting the fact that minors cannot be prosecuted under the law for trafficking crimes in many of these states, our investigations have revealed.
Drug and human traffickers are now using children
The new trend with drug cartels in Mexico is the use of American minors to smuggle drugs at the border. Border patrol agents at checkpoints close to the border with Mexico reported earlier in February 2020 before the pandemic hit the US shores, the rise in the trend after an 18-year-old American driving his father’s car was stopped at a checkpoint in Arizona. According to The Independent, the stationed immigration agents discovered 45 pounds of meth worth $45,000, wrapped in 40 packages and hidden in the door and quarter panels of the vehicle. And, according to the report, he was just one of many victims who was arrested for such offenses and handed over to the Drugs Enforcement Administration.
“It’s a problem, we know it’s there,” a Border Patrol agent Alan Regalado told Fox News. “We’re trying to mitigate that issue through education and prevention.”
“We went out to local high schools and I noticed that students were already recruited at that point,” says Mr. Regalado.
“There’s kids now being recruited in Phoenix, Tucson, not only for northbound activity but also southbound, where they are taking weapons from the United States into Mexico,” Mr. Regalado says. “It’s not just the narcotics coming from Mexico into the United States.”
The involvement of children in organized crimes by cartels is not only limited to drug trafficking. The trend, taken up by human trafficking cartels in Ciudad Juarez, a city in Mexico sharing the borderline with the U.S, is the use of minors, as reported by Aljazeera.
It’s a global problem!
The engagement of children in criminal activities by drug cartels is not only limited to the Mexico-U.S. region.
More than 1100 children were reported to have been trafficked into the drug trade in UK, according to new figures from the Home Office this year. According to data obtained, 1173 minors were reportedly enslaved by drug cartels in 2019 alone.
“In 2018 the Home Office figures recorded 721 people as victims of trafficking into the “county lines” trade. Last year, that figure rose to 1,139, including 1,001 children,” The Guardian reports.
In Colombia, even though the law prohibits forceful recruitment of children into criminal activities by organized crime groups, these cases are still extant in the Latin American country, according to the 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report: Colombia which is made available by the U.S. Department of States.
In 2019 alone, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) reportedly opened 37 investigations over forced child recruitments by ex-combatants in the country.
“It is hard to prosecute minor smugglers”
Reporting on the rise in the recruitment of children into the drug and human trafficking trades between Mexico and the US, Aljazeera reporters, Lucina Melesio and John Holman, say cartels are using people smugglers who are below the legal age because “if caught by the US border,” they’ll most likely make it back to Mexico without prosecution.
“The problem with the U.S. is that it is extremely hard to prosecute minor smugglers and that’s exactly why the cartels are using the kids,” the reporters highlight.
Harvey Slade, a researcher, and officer with Transform Drug Policy Foundation, commenting on the reports of the new cases in the U.K, said: “The illegal drug trade provides an unparalleled source of revenue for organised crime groups.
“The current approach is to send police in to make arrests and seize the drugs, but we know, after 50 years of trying, that this doesn’t work. These new statistics show that organised crime groups are exploiting young and vulnerable people to avoid detection by law enforcement, and maximise profits.”
How they are recruited
An official from the Santa Cruz County Attorney’s Office, Raul Rodriguez, confirmed that cartels are recruiting and using minors for trafficking purposes along the US-Mexican border. Explaining how the recruitment is done, the detective tells KXLH Helena, an affiliate of the CBS, “they are using females more than males, even Caucasian females, and males, to do the transshipment of narcotics.”
According to him, the cartels make use of words of mouth, video games, social media, and trips down to Mexico as a way of recruiting minors.
“A kid from Glendale, Peoria, Mesa can come down here with friends or relatives. They said they are just going to spend the day and go back, but within a couple of hours, they are recruited,” Rodriguez said.
They use them and then “discard” them
The employment of minors for activities related to drug trafficking is related to the murder figures in Mexico. For example, between January 2015 and July 2019, 4,664 children and adolescents were victims of intentional homicide, where 8 out of 10 were male, according to the Executive Secretariat of the National Security System (SESNSP), as reported by the Digital Star.
Also, 8 out of 10 homicide victims under the age of 18 were killed with a firearm, this means that they were executed or died in a confrontation.
One of the minor smugglers along the US-Mexico border, simply known as Jose, who volunteered to speak to Aljazeera, was asked what he would do when he turns 18, the legal age when he is no longer considered a minor and is liable for prosecution for trafficking crimes. The teenager pauses and simply says: “Who knows if I’ll even make it to 18.”
Children, especially those under 11, are a vulnerable group for drug cartels because they have not yet fully developed their ability to decide. Children who are recruited to kill are known as “sicarios children“, according to The Times. Their deaths have no value for the different heads of the criminal groups as they are recruited as disposable items, explained Juan Martín Pérez García, director of Redim, a nonprofit Network for the Rights of the Child in Mexico.
When they are enlisted to be part of a criminal organization, the leaders do not think about training professional criminals, but rather take advantage of their vulnerability and if they are arrested or murdered, they do nothing for them because they know that there are thousands more to be used, Pérez García explained.
97 percent of child and teenage crimes “go unpunished”
767 manslaughters of minors were recorded in 2015 and only three sentences were made, according to several reports from Mexico. This means that, on average, more than two children or young people were murdered each day. Two years later, in 2017, 1,132 violent deaths, mostly with the help of firearms, were recorded. The numbers continued to rise in 2018 and 2019. Statistically speaking, 3.4 minors died per day in Mexico in 2018. The states with the highest number of underage deaths are Guanajuato, Edomex, and Chihuahua.
Pérez García says the increase is due to the lack of attention in the investigation. The inattentiveness creates a feeling of impunity among the criminal gangs, who are often responsible for the murders. “Out of 100 cases in which girls and boys have been victims, only three cases go to trial or judgment; 97 percent go unpunished,” says Juan Martín Pérez García.
“Impunity is widespread in this country,” says Gerardo Rodríguez Sánchez-Lara, coordinator of the Global Index of Impunity Mexico 2018. In 2018, the index showed that 99.3 percent of Crime Going Unpunished in Mexico, ranks fourth in the world for impunity and first in continental America.
In Colombia also, the increased recruitment of minors into illegal drug, sex, and human trafficking cases have been met with stark impunity, according to an NGO. Authorities, according to reports, have not convicted any member from the armed groups making child recruitments since 2017, despite the fact that organized criminal groups are continuing to strengthen operations by bringing in children from nearby Venezuela and Colombia.
According to the report: “The AGO received 329 cases of forced child recruitment involving 354 victims, compared with 388 cases investigated in 2018. Of the 1,872 cases reported in previous years, authorities indicated that 409 were confirmed to be trafficking crimes. In 2019, 399 of those cases were still open.”
Cartels and criminal gangs are taking advantage of this impunity. Organized crime groups such as Los Ardillos, Guerreros Unidos, Los Rojos, Jalisco Nueva Generación, Cártel del Golfo, Pacífico, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, and Noreste use children and young people for their illegal businesses, according to The Excelsior. This has led to an increase in the number of underage murders in recent years in the Southern and Northern America region.
Conclusion:
It is particularly frightening how many children and young people are involved in drug trafficking and other organized crimes. Cartels are luring child victims with power, prestige, and easy money, most especially along the Mexico-US border, in Colombia, and Venezuela. There are several reasons why organized crime groups are targeting them. Lack of attachment, family disintegration, and exclusion of legal punishment for organized crimes perpetuated by minors are the main reasons. However, these minors are mostly “discarded” before the age of 18.
Any crime against people is reprehensible. But crimes against children and young people are particularly horrific. The loss of freedom or the life of a person who has no means of defense simply because of his age destroys hope for a future worth living. Nobody hears the voices of these young people. They are almost invisible victims. But it’s even worse knowing that 97% of crimes committed against these children go unpunished.
