The Mexican drug cartels are having a hard time getting their contraband over the border. They have resorted to a new tactic of hiring 12-year-old kids to take their drugs for them across the border.
They are too afraid to do it themselves. The kids that they are hiring are from the state of Arizona. Not only are they smuggling drugs, but they are also bringing weapons into the country.
Alan Regalado has stated that “It’s a problem, we know it’s there. We’re trying to mitigate that issue through education and prevention.” Young kids are very impressionable. The dopey drug lords know that if they can capture young kids, then they can program to be the next generation of drug slaves.
The number of kids related arrests is on the rise. In 2018 alone there were 36 kids taken into custody. In 2019 there was 57 more arrested and in just two short months of 2020, there have been 17. And this is just in one port of entry in Arizona. These kids are being lured into the drug world, so the cartels do not have to expose themselves.
This fight is just one of many that the border agents have to go through. Regalado has started to fight back with education by setting up the “Together Educating and Mentoring Kids.” The T.E.A.M program is geared to help educate kids about “border recruiters.”
The program has been started early in their years to help them fully learn how to avoid drug agents. Many schools in the south are already running programs like the one starting up in Arizona
He went on to say that “We went out to local high schools and I noticed that students were already recruited at that point.” This is a scary point for the kids because by high school many of them are already pulled into the ring of drugs and weapons. They have sold their souls to the cartels.
The cowardly cartels are recruiting for many jobs such as what Regalado points out “There’s kids now being recruited in Phoenix, Tucson, not only for northbound activity but also southbound, where they are taking weapons from the United States into Mexico, so it’s not just the narcotics coming from Mexico into the United States.” The kids have an easier time getting across the border since they are smaller. They are the perfect slaves for the job according to the beliefs of the cartels.
What the kids do not understand is that at the age of 14 they can be tried as an adult for anything over a class two felony. This means they go to prison with the true criminals where they will be assaulted and even hurt as kids. The educational program is in place to show them that a life of crime has no future for them. They must know the truth because the cartels are feeding them lies all day long.
George Silva is the Santa Cruz County Attorney, and he tells the kids the heavy truth. He will tell them that “At this school, I had promised the kids that if you are caught with dangerous drugs I’m sending you to prison and that’s what ended up happening to this 17-year-old…this student was an honor roll student, you know he was a very good student, he wanted to go NAU and he wanted to study criminal justice, so he thought ‘I can’t afford to go to college so one way of being able to pay for my college is to run dope.’”
The sad truth is that young people are always looking for an easy way to make money. This gives running drugs a huge advantage. A kid gets the drugs and makes the drop.
During the process, they get paid. There is no time clock or long hours. But this is a surface level benefit because the payment for getting caught is far greater than anything anyone is willing to pay.
There are a thousand different reasons why kids are running drugs. For many, it is just for the money or it is just for fun. The T.E.A.M program is the best to keep kids out of harm’s way and out of prison
