The CJNG’s Recruitment Machinery Doesn’t Discriminate Based on Gender, Age or Nationality: The Keys To Its Dynamics

“We are Mencho’s absolute mob!” shouts a young man who, wearing a military-style uniform, films his surroundings.  The video shows at least three pickup trucks lined up, in which young men like him proudly display their heavy weaponry and tactical gear, whose patches bear the insignia of the Mencho Special Forces (FEM), one of the armed wings of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), whose operations frequently extend between Michoacán and Jalisco.

What could have been just another video among the many materials published on digital platforms about members of the criminal organization took a 180-degree turn when a young girl was seen among the group of men. Like her companions, she wears a military-style uniform and a bulletproof vest with the initials CJNG printed right in the center of her chest.

In addition to the outrage it sparked, the recording exposed one of the practices that has allowed the unstoppable growth of the four-letter cartel in the country: recruitment. While it isn’t the only criminal organization that resorts to this activity, in the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the sophistication of both the mechanisms and the profiles of those recruited has become evident.

The Recruitment Practices of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel

Children, teenagers, women, adults, and even mercenaries from the southern part of the continent make up the ranks of what has been considered one of the most powerful and dangerous cartels in the country: the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

Although there is no official count of its members, the people who make up the criminal organization are recruited for different roles, but primarily for its hitman apparatus.

“One of the causes (of recruitment) is the fragmentation within the various large cartels or criminal groups. As different factions emerge, and given the confrontations, a larger workforce is needed for the lowest-ranking tasks, for those people who are on the front lines of the clashes,” Alejandra Arias, a researcher at the Seminar on Violence and Peace at El Colegio de México, explained to MILENIO.

Although social problems such as the structural and symbolic violence in the country, as well as the socioeconomic conditions of the environments and school dropout rates, also contribute to the causes of recruitment, in the specific case of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), its expansion dynamic plays a key role in its intention to redouble efforts to increase the number of people in its ranks.

In states like Michoacán or Guanajuato, the so-called “four-letter cartel” maintains feuds with local criminal organizations such as, for example, Carteles Unidos or the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, for control of municipalities and key routes for their criminal economies, among which drug trafficking and extortion stand out.

Thus, every criminal organization that has a presence in a territory where the CJNG seeks to expand has only two options: align with them or fight them. With this precedent, recruitment has become a practice of utmost importance for the criminal organization, which is also evidenced by achieving what no other cartel could in the past: having a presence in each of the 32 states of the Mexican Republic. From the Yucatán Peninsula to Baja California, the presence of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel has been documented throughout Mexico, according to the latest annual report from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). While its influence is greater in some states than in others, the presence of its forces and the conflicts it wages with rival organizations demonstrate its intention to consolidate its dominance.

“Having a greater need for recruitment and a greater need to increase the number of people aligned with them, they resort to different types of populations, including children, but the structure is also changing, where it’s not only men who are involved in operational activities,” researcher Alejandra Arias explained in an interview with MILENIO.

Research conducted by the Seminar on Violence and Peace at El Colegio de México on the recruitment practices of criminal organizations indicates that among the profiles that generate the most interest are those of individuals with some type of training in weapons handling or combat, such as former military personnel, former police officers, or former security guards.

This consideration hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), as the head of the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection (SSPC), Omar García Harfuch, confirmed in June 2025 that there was a pattern of recruitment of Colombians with military training by the criminal organization.

“Some, in the interviews, mentioned that they had been co-opted by a criminal group and were immediately rejected […] mainly, the vast majority of the recruitment has been by the Jalisco cartel, however, there have also been some from the Sinaloa Cartel,” the federal official specified during the president’s daily press conference after 17 people involved in a mine explosion that killed eight members of the Mexican Army were arrested in Los Reyes, Michoacán. On that occasion, 12 of the detainees were of Colombian origin.

From social media to job offers

Contrary to the word-of-mouth invitations used by criminal organizations of the past, such as the Guadalajara Cartel or the Arellano Félix Cartel, currently, those that have survived—like the factions of the Sinaloa Cartel—or that were born and evolved alongside the digital age—such as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel or the Northeast Cartel—have leveraged technological tools to mass-recruit.

According to Alejandra Arias, a contributor to the report “New Frontiers in Digital Recruitment: Organized Crime Strategies on TikTok (2025),” recruitment on digital platforms can be pursued explicitly and implicitly.

In the first case, the identity building that criminal groups have undertaken has been key. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel, for example, has appropriated emojis, hashtags, and even songs that openly invite users to join their ranks.

“They don’t specify the activity for which these positions are offered; they are only general offers, for example, for anyone who wants to join ‘the company’ or who wants to be included ‘in the work,’ but they don’t mention that it’s as a hitman, for example, or a lookout; they are only general offers to join the criminal group,” explained the collaborator from the Seminar on Violence and Peace at El Colegio de México.

Despite not mentioning it explicitly, the use of resources such as patches with symbols alluding to the criminal organization, such as skulls or roosters, and even the music accompanying the content, reveal that these job offers are, in reality, an invitation to join the ranks of the CJNG.

While this content contains clues about the criminal organization’s recruitment, within and outside of digital platforms there are deceptive job offers that end up becoming cases of forced recruitment. Attractive benefits, including salaries far above the minimum wage, transportation, lodging, and even immediate hiring, are part of the “hooks” they use. A clear example of such cases was revealed after the Guerreros Buscadores de Jalisco group ventured into the vicinity of Rancho Izaguirre in Teuchitlán, which, according to investigations by the Attorney General’s Office (FGR), was used by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) as a training center for its new recruits.

On that occasion, the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar García Harfuch, reported that after tracking the recruitment methods that led dozens of people to the property, more than 30 accounts on digital platforms were disabled. These accounts were used to recruit personnel for the criminal organization, either voluntarily or through coercion.

In addition to the use of social media, in the case of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, it has also been documented that their “job offers,” most of which are fraudulent, are posted in places with high foot traffic, such as bus terminals.

The allure of social media posts or the benefits offered in the “job postings” plastered on lampposts, combined with the social context of many young people, the lack of regulation of digital platforms, and the slow progress in classifying recruitment as a crime, create the ideal environment for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel to continue operating a recruitment machine from which no one is safe, regardless of age, gender, or nationality.

Source: Milenio