The rescue this weekend of four young men from a property in Zapopan—on the outskirts of the Guadalajara metropolitan area—has revived fears regarding forced recruitment by organized crime groups in the region. This nightmare scenario is particularly prevalent in Jalisco, following the discovery of the Izaguirre and La Vega ranches last year. Two of the rescued individuals are minors.
The rescue took place on Sunday morning. Army troops arrived at a property near Lomas de Tesistán, on the outskirts of Zapopan—a semi-rural area north of the La Primavera Forest, near the highway leading to Tequila and Tala, the heart of the Valles region. The Secretariat of National Defense has not issued an official statement on the matter, though a spokesperson confirmed the participation of uniformed personnel in the rescue. The agency has not disclosed how it learned of the victims’ captivity or what became of their captors. Some local media outlets have reported a shootout between military personnel and the captors prior to the rescue.
Despite reports circulating on Sunday, the Jalisco Prosecutor’s Office has denied that the property in question was operating as a “call center”—a facility used to make extortion calls. The agency also has not clarified whether the four men—who were found bound and beaten—were victims of forced recruitment by a criminal organization. “They were deprived of their liberty last week, on Thursday,” a spokesperson said. When asked about the incident, the *Guerreros Buscadores* (Searching Warriors) collective—a group representing the families of missing persons—stated that there is very little information available and that they do not know the victims’ families.
The case has reignited public fear regarding forced recruitment, a common practice of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which has long held the Valles region as one of its primary strongholds. In early 2025, the group *Guerreros Buscadores* discovered a property in Teuchitlán—not far from Tala—known as the Izaguirre ranch, where the CJNG trained forced recruits: young people lured via social media from states across the country to Jalisco through job offers that were typically fraudulent.
Attention surrounding the discovery intensified, fueled by the suspicion that the criminals had used the ranch as an extermination center for recalcitrant recruits, deserters, and the like. The large number of garments found at the site—along with the remains of several bonfires—lent weight to this theory. Although the government led by Claudia Sheinbaum and her security cabinet have acknowledged that murders took place there, they have denied that the Izaguirre ranch operated as an extermination camp.
