Interior Minister Francisco Jiménez stated that the national police and the local prosecutor's office conducted a raid as part of an operation to rescue and protect minors at risk. Jimenez revealed that excavations at the sect's compound uncovered the remains of a six-month-old infant.

The four children, all American citizens, were freed during the operation. The US Embassy expressed gratitude to Guatemalan authorities via a post on the social media platform X, emphasizing that the safety of American citizens remains its top priority.

Details about the children's ages and identities remain undisclosed due to child protection laws. Authorities expect to transfer the children to the US Embassy, which will facilitate their return to the United States within the next 24 hours. In January, the sect's leader, Aaron Teller, faced arrest on suspicion of orchestrating underage marriages. Throughout 2024, over 160 minors were rescued from Lev Tahor in Guatemala and Mexico.

Operativo "#LevTahor Fase 2" en proceso.

Fuerzas Especiales de @PNCdeGuatemala en apoyo a #PGN rescatan y protegen a 4 menores de edad con reporte Alba-Keneth. #Oratorio, #SantaRosa.

¡Excelente resultado Viceministra Palencia! @mingobguate @HSI_HQ pic.twitter.com/E9wg272m1V

— Francisco Jiménez (@FJimenezmingob) May 14, 2025

Lev Tahor established its base in Guatemala in 2013 after fleeing Mexico and Canada, where members faced persecution for similar allegations of child abuse. In Mexico, a case against the sect has been ongoing since 2022, with accusations of human trafficking and sexual abuse of minors following the rescue of a group of children from the sect in Tapachula, Chiapas.

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Romanian police raided the home of internet personality Andrew Tate on Wednesday as part of a new investigation into crimes including human trafficking and money laundering, the influencer's representatives said.

A self-described misogynist, Tate has gained millions of fans by promoting an ultra-masculine lifestyle that critics say denigrates women.

"Although the allegations in the search warrant are not yet fully clarified, they include suspicions of human trafficking and money laundering," Tate's representatives said in a statement on Wednesday. "The brothers' legal team is present to ensure that all formalities are carried out correctly."

Romania's Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) said on Wednesday it had conducted four home search warrants within Ilfov county and the Bucharest municipality. It said the investigation concerned "A criminal case regarding the commission of the crimes of setting up an organized criminal group, trafficking of minors, human trafficking, sexual intercourse with a minor, influencing statements, and money laundering." The hearings will be held at the headquarters of DIICOT – Central Structure.

Your crimes are going to catch up with you.

Police raid Andrew Tate's home in Romania as new allegations emerge involving minorshttps://t.co/SAfzINKrHf

— Darian T. NAFO (@carroll_darian) August 21, 2024

 He was already indicted in mid-2023 along with his brother Tristan and two Romanian female suspects for human trafficking, rape, and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, allegations they denied. In July, a Romanian court of appeal overturned a previous ruling that allowed Tate free movement within the European Union while awaiting trial on charges of human trafficking.

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In a sprawling settlement of mud brick huts in western Afghanistan housing people displaced by drought and war, a woman is fighting to save her daughter.

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Aziz Gul's husband sold their 10-year-old into marriage without telling his wife, taking a down-payment so he could feed his family of five children. Otherwise, he told her, they would all starve. He had to sacrifice one to save the rest.

Many of Afghanistan's growing number of destitute people are making such desperate decisions as their nation spirals into a vortex of poverty.

Afghanistan's aid-dependent economy was already teetering when the Taliban seized power in mid-August amid a chaotic withdrawal of US and NATO troops. The international community froze Afghanistan's assets abroad and halted funding, unwilling to work with a Taliban government given its reputation for brutality during its previous rule 20 years ago.

The consequences have been devastating for a country battered by war, drought and the coronavirus pandemic. State employees haven't been paid in months. Malnutrition stalks the most vulnerable, and aid groups say more than half the population faces acute food shortages.

"Day by day, the situation is deteriorating in this country, and especially children are suffering," said Asuntha Charles, national director of the World Vision aid organization in Afghanistan, which runs a health clinic for displaced people near the western city of Herat. "Today I have been heartbroken to see that the families are willing to sell their children to feed other family members."

Arranging marriages for very young girls is common in the region. The groom's family pays money to seal the deal, and the child usually stays with her parents until she is at least around 15. Yet with many unable to afford even basic food, some say they'd allow prospective grooms to take very young girls or are even trying to sell their sons.

Gul, unusually in this deeply patriarchal, male-dominated society, is resisting. Married off herself at 15, she says she would kill herself if her daughter, Qandi Gul, is taken away.

When her husband told her he had sold Qandi, "my heart stopped beating. I wished I could have died at that time, but maybe God didn't want me to die," Gul said, with Qandi by her side peering shyly from beneath her sky-blue headscarf. "Each time I remember that night...I die and come back to life."

Her husband told her he sold one to save the others, saying they all would have died otherwise.

"Dying was much better than what you have done," she said she told him.

Gul rallied her brother and village elders and with their help secured a "divorce" for Qandi, on condition she repays the 100,000 afghanis (about $1,000) her husband received. It's money she doesn't have.

Her husband fled, possibly fearing Gul might denounce him to authorities. The Taliban government recently banned forced marriages.

Gul says she isn't sure how long she can fend off the family of the prospective groom, a man of around 21.

"I am just so desperate. If I can't provide money to pay these people and can't keep my daughter by my side, I have said that I will kill myself," she said. "But then I think about the other children. What will happen to them? Who will feed them?" Her eldest is 12, her youngest –  her sixth – just two months.

In another part of the camp, father-of-four Hamid Abdullah was also selling his young daughters into arranged marriages, desperate for money to treat his chronically ill wife, pregnant with their fifth child.

He can't repay money he borrowed to fund his wife's treatments, he said. So three years ago, he received a down-payment for his eldest daughter Hoshran, now seven, in an arranged marriage to a now 18-year-old.

The family who bought Hoshran are waiting until she is older before settling the full amount and taking her. But Abdullah needs money now, so he is trying to arrange a marriage for his second daughter, six-year-old Nazia, for about 20,000-30,000 afghanis ($200-$300).

"We don't have food to eat," and he can't pay his wife's doctor, he said.

His wife, Bibi Jan, said they had no other option but it was a difficult decision. "When we made the decision, it was like someone had taken a body part from me."

In neighboring Badghis province, another displaced family is considering selling their son, eight-year-old Salahuddin.

His mother, Guldasta, said that after days with nothing to eat, she told her husband to take Salahuddin to the bazaar and sell him to bring food for the others.

"I don't want to sell my son, but I have to," the 35-year-old said. "No mother can do this to her child, but when you have no other choice, you have to make a decision against your will."

Salahuddin blinked and looked on silently, his lip quivering slightly.

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His father, Shakir, blind in one eye and with kidney problems, said the children had been crying for days from hunger. Twice he decided to take Salahuddin to the bazaar, and twice he faltered. "But now I think I have no other choice."

Buying boys is believed to be less common than girls, and when it does take place, it appears to be cases families without sons buying infants. In her despair, Guldasta thought perhaps such a family might want an eight-year-old.

The desperation of millions is clear as more and more people face hunger, with some 3.2 million children under five years old facing acute malnutrition, according to the UN.

Charles, World Vision's national director for Afghanistan, said humanitarian aid funds are desperately needed.

"I'm happy to see the pledges are made," she said. But the pledges "shouldn't stay as promises, they have to be seen as reality on the ground."

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The Biden administration designated 17 countries Thursday as not doing enough to combat human trafficking and warned them of potential US sanctions.

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A State Department report report covering 188 nations said the outbreak had put millions more people at risk and distracted some governments from combating human trafficking.

The 17 nations are Afghanistan, Algeria, Burma, China, Comoros, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, South Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and this year's newcomers Malaysia and Guinea-Bissau.

"It's a global crisis, it's an enormous source of human suffering," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, citing estimates that almost 25 million people, many of them women and children, are victims.

The administration also called out several US allies, including Israel, for backsliding in their efforts. That means they don't meet international standards for fighting trafficking but are making significant efforts to do so.

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The 2019 Trafficking in Persons Report ranked Israel as a Tier 1 state, leading the world in the struggle against the illegal trade of humans for the purpose of forced labor, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation. This grave phenomenon is believed to affect millions of men, women, and children, who fall prey to this nefarious, multibillion-dollar industry each year.

The top tier group includes only 33 countries.

The Justice Ministry said Israeli law enforcement agencies wage an aggressive and uncompromising battle against the local human trafficking industry, which is believed to generate about $1 billion annually.

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The State Department's report noted that Israel takes a three-pronged approach to combating human trafficking, focusing its efforts on prevention, enforcement, and protecting the victims. It said that during the course of 2018, 59 victims of trafficking and slavery were identified in Israel, 139 criminal investigations were opened and 22 indictments were filed in connection with trafficking offenses.

The report, which reviews global efforts against human trafficking, has been published since 2001. It is divided into three groups, according to the efforts each country invests in combating this criminal enterprise.

For more than a decade, Israel had ranked in the third and lowest tier, listing countries whose efforts in this field were inadequate and made them vulnerable to economic sanctions by the US. This changed in 2012, and since then, Israel has maintained its top tier status, all while several Western countries, including Germany, Italy, and Denmark, have lost their top ranking.

Justice Ministry Director General Emi Palmor, who heads a committee of directors general for the struggle against human trafficking, said the ministerial unit that heads these efforts "continues to lead the use of integrated tools in the various spheres in the struggle against the human trafficking. There is a good reason why Israel is on the highest level of the US State Department's report for the eighth consecutive year. We will continue to advance Israel's efforts in this area and preserve its clear achievements while coping with new patterns of human trafficking in all of its forms in Israel."

Justice Minister Amir Ohana said that "this is the eighth year in a row in which Israel's efforts to eradicate human trafficking have been recognized internationally, and I commend the continued commitment and cooperation of all government ministries with the [Justice] ministry. We will continue to act to increase enforcement against offenders in order to eradicate the phenomenon and to assist the victims of the crime."

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