The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) warns about the recruitment of minors; Mexico reports 18,000 missing children and adolescents.

Mexico reports 18,192 minors (9,342 girls and adolescent women, and 8,817 boys and adolescent men) missing, amid forced recruitment into criminal organizations, according to the "Situation of Human Rights in Mexico" report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The commission documented testimonies from organizations and survivors who described how adolescents as young as 13 and 14 are recruited, kidnapped, or lured by criminal groups in states such as Jalisco, Mexico State, Sonora, and Tamaulipas, to be turned into combatants, informants, messengers, or hitmen. This occurs in a country that already has 128,713 missing persons and over 70,000 unidentified bodies in state custody. The report states that childhood and adolescence have become one of the most vulnerable sectors to organized crime, particularly in regions where criminal organizations exert territorial control and exploit poverty, family violence, lack of opportunities, and institutional absence to recruit minors. The IACHR identifies critical areas in municipalities of Mexico State, such as Ecatepec, Naucalpan, Tlalnepantla, Nezahualcóyotl, and Cuautitlán Izcalli, as well as in areas of Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Sonora. It also warns about the Pacific Corridor, comprising Colima, Nayarit, Jalisco, and Sinaloa, where disappearances are highly prevalent due to organized crime. Furthermore, the commission collected testimonies from search groups in Sonora that reported cases of adolescents recruited in exchange for money or weapons. "In some cases, the victims returned alive. In other cases, the adolescents permanently joined criminal groups, or lost their lives in armed clashes," the document states. One of the most harrowing testimonies is that of Alfredo, a 17-year-old who was kidnapped in Toluca along with other young people and taken to a criminal training camp in Tierra Caliente, Guerrero. "There were dozens of young people deprived of their liberty, forced to train to become part of the armed group of organized crime," he told the IACHR. "There were groups of 20, 30, 15, or 10 people, aged 14 to 20, at the mercy of their captors." Alfredo managed to escape during a clash between the criminal group and the Mexican Army. He is currently in his final year of high school and has requested protection for himself and his family, as well as help to rescue his missing friends. The IACHR also received testimonies from surviving minors who claimed to have been used to prepare drugs, transport messages, or participate in armed confrontations. Although some recruitments occur through kidnapping, the IACHR warns that others appear to be "voluntary," but are driven by poverty, social exclusion, and domestic violence. The commission also recalled the case of Juanito Pistolas, an adolescent recruited from the age of 13 for hitman work in Tamaulipas, who died in a clash with authorities in Nuevo Laredo in 2019. The report also warns that more girls than boys disappear in Mexico. According to the National Registry of Missing Persons, the most affected group is adolescents aged 12 to 16, where the number of missing women reaches 5,454 cases compared to 4,266 missing men. The highest concentration of missing girls is in Mexico State, with 2,594 cases, followed by Mexico City, with 882, and Tamaulipas, with 690. The IACHR notes that many disappearances of adolescent women are linked to networks of human trafficking and sexual exploitation through grooming on social networks, video games, and mobile applications. "My daughter was 20 years old, and I think she was taken for trafficking and taken out of the country," said Adela Alvarado, mother of Mónica Alejandrina, who has been missing since 2004. She stated that the family suffered threats and the disappearance of 19 complete volumes of the investigation file. The report also includes the case of Fátima Aldrighetti, a seven-year-old girl whose search was not immediately activated by the authorities. When she was found, she was dead and showed signs of torture. The IACHR confirmed that Jalisco, Mexico State, and Tamaulipas have the highest number of missing persons in the country, with 15,330, 14,48, and 13,471 cases, respectively.