The job is to get the drugs out as quickly as possible without being seen. Once the cocaine arrives camouflaged in the enormous flow of legal products or hidden on ships at the port terminal, the collectors enter the scene. Sometimes after jumping the fence. Others, after waiting for days in containers equipped with a bathroom, sleeping bags and junk or easy-to-cook food. In Belgium and the Netherlands, which are home to the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp, the largest in Europe, they are called uithalers (extractors, in Dutch). And it is a criminal phenomenon that has put the authorities on alert, because criminal organizations have expanded their recruitment networks. More and more young people, even minors, are looking for them to carry out these tasks, one of the riskiest links in the drug trafficking chain.
“The majority are Belgian or Dutch and are between 18 and 30 years old, but there are also many minors,” warns An Berger, spokesperson for the Belgian federal police. In recent months, cases have soared in Antwerp, the continent’s second-largest port and the main gateway for cocaine trafficking into Europe. In 2024, 100 drug collectors were arrested in the city of half a million people and 16 of them were under 18 years old. This year, there have already been more than 200 detainees and 40 were not adults when they were captured, according to the latest official data.
“They are children,” explains lawyer Chantal van den Bosch, who has been practicing in the Belgian city since the mid-1980s and who has seen the age of her clients drop “drastically”. The youngest pictured, a boy accused of selling drugs on the street, was 13 when he was brought before the judge. “We have boys of 14 or 15 years old who sell or consume drugs in containers,” he laments. “Sometimes I joke with the police that they should have a corner of the station with teddy bears.”
At the heart of the European Union, mafias see the boys as an ideal workforce to use as dealers, security guards and drug collectors in the port terminal, where the vast majority of the more than 500 tonnes of cocaine seized in Belgium between 2019 and 2024 was found, according to official figures. No European country has seized so many during this period.
Motorcycles, phones and video games
The bait is usually launched via social networks, in applications like Snapchat, where messages disappear after a certain time, or Telegram, where private discussions generally escape censorship, according to local press. Europol points out in a report published last year that criminal groups do not only use the platforms most popular with young people. They also imitate the techniques of influencers be more effective when approaching potential recruits. Their messages are full of memes and emojis, and tasks are presented as if they were “missions” or part of a “video game,” warns the institution.
Factors such as the need to have a sense of belonging, the exploitation of economic deprivation, the “glamorous” presentation of the lifestyle of those who engage in criminal activity or the lack of opportunities also come into play. In the second quarter of the year, unemployment in Belgium among people aged 15 to 24 was 14.5%, while the overall rate was 5.9%. The Belgian authorities emphasize that the groups most active in drug trafficking are also those which rely more on the recruitment of minors, such as those from Albania, the Netherlands and Belgian-Moroccan gangs, who use them for an increasingly wide range of crimes, from trafficking to extortion.
“It’s not a coincidence, it’s calculated,” says Europol. Recruitment online This extends the reach of criminal networks, reduces the possibility of their detection and makes face-to-face meetings less necessary to plan operations. “By using young people, criminal networks seek to reduce their own risks and protect themselves from law enforcement,” he adds. While an adult who collects drugs faces a 40-month prison sentence, minors cannot be imprisoned by law in Belgium and are instead sent to reformatories. They are also easily replaceable in the eyes of criminal organizations. “When one is arrested, there are 10 others waiting or ready to do the same,” laments Van den Bosch.
“The big problem with cocaine trafficking is that there is a lot of money involved,” Berger explains. The authorities specify that the remuneration offered to young people varies enormously depending on the work. A boy recruited as a security guard, for example, can earn between 100 and 150 euros per day, he points out. A drug trafficker “maybe earns a little more.” Van den Bosch claims to receive around 10 euros for each order delivered. But in the case of uithalersthe sums can reach several thousand euros, according to the testimonies of those arrested. “I received 40,000 euros,” a former Dutch collector said last year when interviewed by the NOS television channel. After struggling to find a job, he was recruited after seeing a post on Snapchat. He was sentenced to six months in prison after being arrested in Belgium.
In other cases, it is not always necessary to offer large payments or use sophisticated recruitment methods. “Sometimes a friend comes over and says, ‘Hey, don’t you want a moped? I have a good job for you,'” Berger says. “Sometimes they tell us that we gave them a PlayStation or a mobile phone, but it depends a lot on what we ask them to do,” adds Van den Bosch. “At first they think it’s easy money, they only think about bling bling (status and ostentation of wealth),” adds the 62-year-old lawyer, who strives to speak the same language as her clients. “They are not aware of the consequences and once inside, it is very difficult to get out because they are threatened or their families are intimidated,” she adds.
“Trojan Horse Competitors”
“It’s extremely dangerous, because they are entering unknown territory,” Berger says of those who venture into the port to collect goods. 90% of cocaine arriving from South America to Europe does so by sea. But the huge quantities of drugs detected in ports have forced authorities in several countries on the continent to step up security and surveillance. The task is also complicated by the volume of products transported by sea. In Antwerp alone, whose port terminal extends over an area equivalent to more than 22,000 football fields, 14 million containers pass through each year and it is not enough to have generic instructions to recover the caches.
Often, collectors are responsible for removing goods before they pass port inspection or retrieving shipments that are virtually considered lost. Berger says sometimes they receive a map and specific coordinates to pick them up. Sometimes they climb fences with ropes or row inflatable boats to the terminal, according to local press.
However, some operations are very dangerous, known in criminal jargon as the “Trojan container” method. It consists of introducing the uithalers in empty containers, where they remain for days until they find a moment to get out and retrieve the cocaine from another container or until a port employee gives them the signal to do so. In December 2023, six pickers had to be rescued in Antwerp after being stuck in a container for a week. In January 2024, 19 people, including six minors, were found in a “Trojan horse container” in Rotterdam.
Van den Bosch assures that in addition to the increase in statistics, the profile of recruits has diversified, at least in the case of his clients. “There are minors who come from difficult situations, who see that others have a lot or need money,” he concedes. But there are also some from privileged backgrounds, without family problems or unusual socialization. “Some see it as an adventure,” believes the lawyer. “When they get caught, they realize it’s not a game, that they can’t hit the reset button and start again,” he says.
The latest communications from the Antwerp local police show the penetration of criminal groups among the youngest, such as the three boys aged 15, 16 and 17 who were arrested on November 5 with a butterfly knife, scales, zip-lock bags, money and drugs hidden in their underwear. Or the case of another minor, arrested two days later in the city center with 22 doses of cocaine and just under 800 euros. Van den Bosch believes that we must focus on prevention and offer alternatives to young people so that they do not fall into criminal networks. “We can’t give up,” he says before returning to the files piling up in his office.
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