In exchange for pocket change, Mexican drug Cartels are now using American children to do their dirty work for them! To find out how hit the jump!!
Violent Mexican drug gangs are offering American children pocket change to run errands for them and do other small jobs, Reuters reported.
Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told Reuters that 25 children were arrested in a Texas border county this year alone.
“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 told the news service.
The kids – reportedly known as the “expendables” – also served as lookouts for the gangs, who are responsible for tens of thousands of death in the gruesome violence of the Mexican drug wars.
To help counteract the gang’s efforts, American law enforcement officers are heading to schools and to talk to parents about the dangers of accepting the easy money, according to the report.
While the report is chilling, it’s not the first time that law enforcement officers have warned that American children were being recruited by the drug gangs.
In 2009, The New York Times reported that gangs had been targeting American teens to be used as assassins as far back as 2005.
“They wave that power, that cash, the cars, the easy money,” a Laredo, Texas detective told The Times. “And these kids all have that romantic notion they are going to live forever.”
A recent report commissioned by McGraw and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples found that the cartels were seeking a distribution point for drugs in territory north of Mexico, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The report, along with recent reports of violence, has turned border security into a hot-button issue for Republican presidential candidate and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
“We cannot have national security until we have border security,” Perry said in a speech in Indianapolis last week, the Star-Telegram reported.
