Source: Los Angeles Times
“Immigration authorities in Colombia have taken 17 children into protective custody after they were rescued from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect whose members have been accused of sexually abusing and kidnapping minors in several countries. Gloria Esperanza Arriero, the director of Colombia’s national immigration service, told the Associated Press on Monday that her agency questioned nine members of the Lev Tahor sect during a hotel inspection Sunday. ‘We will likely deport them,’ Arriero said, ‘because there are no arrest orders for them in Colombia.’ She said that the group of 17 children and nine adults arrived in Colombia during the last week of October, and were staying in a hotel in the small northwestern city of Yarumal while they searched for a rural property they could use to start up a new site in the South American country.” (11/24/25)