In Ecuador, Colombia, Haiti, Venezuela … more and more minors are recruited by the underworld. Guys or even children caught in misery are pushed – in exchange for a plate of rice or simply to feel part of a “family” – to become terrorists, to thicken armed gangs, to perform extortion, to pass, to kill. And the “model” is coming to Europe, in Italy, due to immigration. The alarm in a report.
Colombian, without criminal records, cold in the execution. But he is only 15 years old. He is the Baby Sicario who tried to kill Bogotá Miguel Uribu Torbay, pre-end of the center-right and favored in the presidential elections of 2026. A blow to the head, exploded in broad daylight, sent the politician in a coma. After five surgical interventions, his life remains hung on a thread. The minor, held in an educational center supervised 24 hours a day, became the symbol of a disturbing reality: armed teenagers, when they are not even children, are no longer just an exception, but a system strategy for signs, urban gangs and mafias.
The attack shook an entire country, but did not surprise the experts. Already in 2024, a report by the Ecuadorian Observatory of organized crime indicated the exponential growth of the juvenile recruitment by the Narcos. Today, after a year, the phenomenon not only consolidated throughout Latin America, but has also contaminated Europe.
“We observe a lowering of the age of radicalization both in terrorism and in organized crime”explains to Panorama Ruggero Scaturro, Senior Analyst at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-COC), a network that brings together hundreds of experts on the topic. «The criminal groups adopt increasingly flexible structures, in cells, less hierarchical. In this scheme, minors are perfect: less controlled by the police, less punishable and much cheaper to “manage” than to adults, “says Scaturro, co-author for Gi-Coc of the relationship entitled The Children’s Soldier of Europe (Child Solices of Europe).
In Ecuador, a strategic country for cocaine exports to Europe and Asia, the great gangs such as Los Choneros and Los Lobos enlist children not only as pusher or “eyes” in the area, but as real hired assassins. The most striking case involved two 11 and 13 -year -old brothers arrested after a cold -blooded execution of a policeman in the city of Esmeraldas, two years ago.
Haiti, today in total chaos, also represents an infernal laboratory of the juvenile recruitment. The armed gangs took advantage of the institutional void and rampant hunger to transform thousands of children into militants. At just 9 years old, a boy can handle an assault rifle and fight against the police or rival bands. Their pay? A plate of rice and the illusion of being part of a “family”.
In Venezuela, in the heart of the fiefdom, the mega-bandes like the Tren de Aragua operate undisturbed with armies of very young people. Some are trained in the “popular fields” of the Bolivarian militias, others are kidnapped and forced to kill to “demonstrate loyalty”.
The most surprising data – and alarming – is that in Europe the Latin American model is starting to replicate. According to the recent study of Gi-Coc, based on investigative and judicial sources in various EU member states, from Germany to France, from Italy to the United Kingdom, the number of children involved in violent criminal activities, including murders on commission, grows.
«Minors are used as pusher, couriers and in some cases as assassins also in Europe. In Naples, in Brussels or Marseille, episodes have occurred that closely remember the South American ones. Very young boys, sometimes even 7 years old, already involved in feuds and murders “, reads the report. To worsen the picture there are uncontrolled migrations. Hundreds of unaccompanied minors from Africa, Asia and Latin America end up in the hands of European signs. They are used for drug trafficking, weapons or prostitution. They have no documents, nobody claims them, and above all: they have no alternatives.
According to Scaturro, “the combination of migratory vulnerability, access to light weapons and weakness of the institutions creates a perfect cocktail. Furthermore, European laws are fragmented: a minor of 14 years of age author of a murder can leave the prison after a few months in certain countries. Criminal groups know these dynamics well, and take advantage of it ».
An often underestimated aspect is the impact of digital. Today the mafias in the world no longer recruit on the street, but on social networks, in online games, in Telegram’s cryptic groups. «Digital platforms have become a key tool for recruitment and early radicalization. Young people are approached through normalized content, which enhance violence, criminal luxury, the idea that crime is a legitimate shortcut to get out of misery “, explains Scaturro.
The criminal aesthetic also plays a decisive role. Trap, Narco-Corridos, videos on Tiktok shot in the districts at risk of the planet contribute to building the “small boss” icon, with machine gun and gold chain around neck. For a teenager without opportunities, all this is irresistible. According to Scaturro, the first response must be the prevention based on the data. «We need reliable monitoring systems, to quantify and understand the evolution of the phenomenon. We cannot fight what we don’t know how to measure, “he says.
Legislative harmonization is then needed at European and global level. For the expert “regulatory gaps and the uneven application of juvenile justice, they generate an impunity effect that promotes recruitment”. The role of the international law enforcement officers are also crucial, which must cooperate in a closer way. «Isolated operations are not enough. A common strategy is needed, integrated task force, exchange of intelligence and the victims must be reinserted », suggests Scaturo.
In short, the difference between Bogotá and Berlin, between Guayaquil and Naples, is thinning. And it is no longer just about importing cocaine or weapons from Latin America. Recruitment models, organizational methods and philosophies of the criminal power in which the minor is seen as a US-E-Getta resource are exported. According to European sources in Europe, some North African bands in France and Belgium have begun to use the same behavioral codes as the Pandillas Salvadorane, such as affiliation and tattoos.
As for Italy, several anti -mafia magistrates have reported the exponential increase of minors involved in violent crimes in Naples and Reggio Calabria. The phenomenon is made even more insidious by a juvenile justice not designed to face such escalation. Many European laws were born to protect minors, not to protect them from a criminal system that exploits them. The danger, the experts warn, is also cultural. In many marginalized environments, organized crime has replaced the school, the family, the state. It offers protection, status, earnings, an identity. A child who grows up with the gun as a symbol of success is already lost before even pressing the trigger. “For many guys,” explains Scaturro again, “it is the shortest way to feel important. It is the shortcut between invisibility and power ».
The risk is that this model from Latin America is permanently rooted in the European suburbs, that baby gangs become the new normality and that minors are no longer an anomaly in crime, but the avant -garde. The only way to avoid this scenario, concludes the expert, is to face the problem with a complex, multilive and global vision. «This phenomenon cannot be fought isolatedly. We need an integrated response that combines legislative, operational, educational and social measures. The exchange of data, the innovative prevention practices and social inclusion programs represent the keys to stem the rise of crime “Child Solcks”. But it is necessary to do it now, before it’s too late ». There is not only public security at stake, but the very estate of the social pact itself. If childhood becomes a pelvis of labor for the mafias, then crime will have already won in the field that matters more: that of the future.
