Guadalajara, Mexico, Jul 16 (EFE).- Organized crime groups in Mexico are targeting increasingly younger individuals and have diversified the ways they lure them through deception and false job offers, civil society organizations in Jalisco (west) reported on Thursday.
“People have been coming to us asking for help because their children are missing; they’re being taken away, they’re being recruited, and unfortunately, they’re very young, between 13 and 16 years old,” Virginia Ponce, a member of “Manos Buscadoras” (Searching Hands), a collective of relatives of missing persons, told EFE.
The cases of three teenagers between the ages of 14 and 16 who went missing in Guadalajara, Jalisco, and three more in Puerto Vallarta in late June serve as an example of how criminal groups are increasingly targeting minors to carry out illegal activities.
“They’re being offered a job that pays a lot of money, and as a parent, you can’t provide them with everything. I don’t know how they sweet-talk them into making such a drastic decision,” said Ponce, who has been searching for his son, Víctor Hugo Meza, since 2020.
Security authorities have detected cases of teenagers between 13 and 16 who have gone missing or who have received invitations to join schemes offering false job promises, Jalisco’s Secretary of Security, Juan Pablo Hernández, admitted a few days ago.
