SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – Texas law enforcement officials say several Mexican drug cartels are luring American children as young as 11 to work in their smuggling operations.
Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told Reuters the drug gangs have a chilling name for the young Texans lured into their operations.
“They call them ‘the expendables,’“ he said.
McCraw said his investigators have evidence that six Mexican drug gangs have “command and control centres” in Texas recruiting children for their operations, attracting them with what appears to be “easy money” for doing simple tasks.
“Cartels would pay kids $50 just for them to move a vehicle from one position to another position, which allows the cartel to keep it under surveillance to see if law enforcement has it under surveillance,” he said. “Of course, once you’re hooked up with them, there’s consequences.”
McCraw said 25 minors had been arrested in one Texas border county alone in the past year for running drugs, acting as lookouts, or doing other work for Mexican drug gangs. The cartels are now fanning out, he said, and have operations in all major Texas cities.
This month, “we made an arrest of a 12-year-old boy who was in a stolen pickup truck with 800 pounds (363 kg) of marijuana,” he said. “So they do recruit our kids.”
McCraw says the state of Texas is joining a program initiated by US Customs and Border Protection called Operation Detour, in which law enforcement officers meet children and their parents in schools and at community centers to warn them about the dangers of what appears to be the easy money the Mexican drug gangs offer.
Law enforcement officers say children are less likely to be suspects than adults, are easily manipulated by relatively small sums of money, and face less severe penalties than adults if arrested.
