Cartels pay teenagers $150 to smuggle drugs into the United States

The need or the ability to earn “easy” money seduces many young people who fall into the clutches of organized crime. Cartels use teenagers to smuggle drugs into the United States, paying them $150 and seeing them as disposable items, as they do not care about their safety in the slightest.

The Border Patrol has reported several cases, which allow us to see the modus operandi of criminal groups, which It even cost the life of a 16-year-old teenagera situation that revealed the little importance that these people have both for those who hire them and for the authorities.

A report from the newspaper Milenio details this situation, documenting some of the cases involving minors in drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States, which it has tracked for five years and totaled 28.

One of those cases was that of Marcelino, a 16-year-old minor who died while trafficking drugsThe young man was waiting to cross from Tijuana to the United States. He was carrying the drugs in two bottles of what he said was apple juice and he would use it to cool down while waiting.

But he was searched by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, who told him that the bottles were most likely drugs. One of them even emptied them onto the table, hoping they would evaporate and leave crystals, proof that they were amphetamines.

It didn’t happen right away, They made him drink a big sip and the young man began to feel sick.he continued like this for a few hours until they finally called the paramedics, but he died of cardiac arrest.

The other cases

In Marcelino’s case, the crossing attempt was done in the old-fashioned way, hiding the drug in what would appear to be a common object, for drinking, but in other cases Drug traffickers seek to take advantage of young people’s knowledge of technology to do the dirty work.

In another case, a 16-year-old boy used a remote-controlled cart to smuggle drugs across the border. The job seemed easy and fun to him, but everything changed when Border Patrol agents in San Diego discovered him. When they stopped him, they saw that he had 50 packages of methamphetamine.

In Yuma, Arizona, a 17-year-old teenager was discovered received and sent packages from the border using a dronethe work ended when it was discovered.

Of all the cases, only one involved a woman. She was also a teenager. She tried to enter the U.S. through El Paso, Texas. She was carrying a kind of loudspeaker with her, but during her interview, the officers did not believe her story. A trained dog discovered her by sniffing drugs on the device, and when they opened it, they saw that she had three packages of methamphetamine.

But they are not the only modalities that young people use, Some carried drugs in their tennis shoes, in toys or in cars; others among the clothes stuck to the body or in different articles through which the adolescents agreed to cooperate.

Drug traffickers often use teenagers because they are easy to convince. They also trick them into believing that if they are arrested nothing will happen because they are minors, but in the end they are left to their own devices.

Keep reading:
– In Mexico, there are 250,000 girls and boys at risk of being recruited by organized crime.
– They returned from hell: Young people forced to join drug trafficking who managed to escape its clutches.