Gangs Are Recruiting Children to Guide Undocumented Across Mexico’s Border Lucina Melesio and John Holman - Al Jazeera
go to original October 30, 2017

Mexico cartels recruit children to smuggle people to US (Al Jazeera English)

14-year-old Jose works for a local cartel, guiding undocumented immigrants from Ciudad Juarez across the desert, and into Texas and New Mexico.

The cartel uses him as a people smuggler because, as a minor, he'll most likely get a ride back to Mexico if caught by the US border patrol. From there he can make the trip again, and again.

Jose is not the only one. Organised crime leaders are using numbers of children and adolescents to cross migrants all along the Mexico-US border, researchers tell Al Jazeera.

... Cartels often fight over drug and people smuggling routes with considerable collateral damage.

Ciudad Juarez, in particular, has seen years of such conflicts. At the end of the last decade, the city was dubbed the "murder capital of the world".

When asked what he plans to do when he reaches 18 - the age when he is no longer a minor and is in danger of prosecution by US authorities - Jose takes a long pause before he says: "Who knows if I'll even make it to 18."

Read the rest at Al Jazeera

Related: Tentacles of Organized Crime in Mexico Extend to Octopus Theft (InSight Crime)

Related: Mexican Cartels Used Government Data to Kidnap and Extort Avocado Farmers (Newsweek)

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