Zacatecas, Mexico: CJNG Recruits Youth Through Facebook

 "Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

The head of the Secretary of Public Security of Zacatecas, Arturo López Bazán, assured that with false profiles organized crime recruits young people.

With deception, young people are recruited via Facebook and WhatsApp by the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel under the promise of giving them a job, then kidnap them and take them to camps to train as hitmen.

According to Luis, at the beginning of 2017 he was working in a rehabilitation center, but since he wasn’t making enough money and wanted to get away from the addiction environment, he looked for a new job using social networks.

In April of that year, he joined the Facebook page Bolsa de Trabajo GDL and Trabajos Guadalajara. By inbox they contacted him for a job offer: 4 thousand pesos a week as a security guard. He then contacted the woman who sent him the message and she asked him to contact Mario, the company's shift supervisor.

A week later he was added to a WhatsApp group along with 15 other people interested in the job. They asked them to attend a training session in the municipality of Tala and they would give them the 4 thousand pesos in advance.

He couldn’t imagine that on their first day of work they would be put into safe houses and then transported towards the camps in the Sierra de Ahuisculco, not to kill them, but to train them and force them to work for the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación. The families of some of them reported them as missing, without knowing that they were alive in the hands of organized crime.

THE REALITY IN ZACATECAS

The Secretary of Public Security (SSP) of Zacatecas detected the recruitment of minors to add them to the ranks of organized crime; adolescents and young people from various municipalities are persuaded or deceived through social networks, so a prevention program will be implemented.

"There have been countless cases," warned the head of the SSP, Arturo López Bazán. He specified that this mode of operation was identified in Fresnillo, Valparaíso, Jerez de García Salinas and Monte Escobedo, although he clarified that they are not the only places where it occurs, since it has been happening throughout the state.

He exemplified that recently, security authorities arrested a group of people in Fresnillo, including adolescents from Mexico City; The young people declared that they had just arrived at El Mineral.

They stated that they arrived in the Zacatecan municipality by truck; They were collected at the bus station and distributed in neighborhoods, such as Industrial and Plan de Ayala, or in communities, where they had to be trained and received functions to be carried out.

The age range of minors who have fallen into this organized crime trap ranges from 14 to 17 years old. Using fake profiles, recruiters contact teens in Facebook chats or groups, offering drugs or circulating promises of supposedly good pay.

Many of the young men enrolled were arrested without even receiving the first payment promised by the criminal cells.

In the presentation of the Conference on the Responsible Use of Social Networks that takes place in the municipality of Fresnillo, López Bazán explained the way in which organized crime groups surprise young people from the entity.

“We have the experience and it is real for Zacatecas, through Facebook they are recruiting for organized crime, it is a real issue, a current issue in our society, that is why we give this importance to this work that is being carried out in a collaborative way, the important thing is that is precisely the call that arrives to bring the youngsters so that they are the ones who realize what can happen ”, commented the secretary.

Last December, La Silla Rota published the story of a young man held in captivity in El Aguaje, municipality of Aguililla, Michoacán, aired one of the ways in which the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) recruits young people to join its ranks criminals.

In this case, according to the young man, along with 38 other job seekers, they were recruited by an alleged private security agency; In the end, they were  working as hitmen for the CJNG.

Source: La Silla Rota