Colombian authorities say they prevented an ultra-Orthodox sect with an international trail of child-abuse allegations from establishing itself in the northwest Antioquia region, after finding 17 children living with the group in a highway hotel and placing them under state protection.
The intervention took place on November 23 in Yarumal, a mountain town 72 miles north of Medellín on Route 25, the main corridor that links Colombia’s interior to the Caribbean coast.
Highlights
- Colombian authorities rescued 17 children from Lev Tahor, an ultra-Orthodox sect linked to child abuse and forced marriages.
- Five minors had Interpol yellow notices triggered by a U.S. legal guardian after the group entered Colombia in late October.
- Lev Tahor has faced international legal scrutiny, prompting relocations from Israel, Canada, Guatemala, Mexico, and now Colombia.
- Mainstream Jewish groups in Colombia denounced Lev Tahor, stating its practices contradict Jewish traditions and the law.
- Experts call for an international cult expert unit and stronger state cooperation to protect affected children globally.
Migration agents, backed by the army’s anti-kidnapping unit (GAULA) and the child-welfare agency ICBF, entered a local hotel after residents reported the presence of a large foreign group.
Colombian authorities have prevented Lev Tahor from setting up a community in the South American country
Image credits: Luis Vargas/Anadolu/Getty Images
Inside were 26 people tied to Lev Tahor, a Jewish sect that has faced controversy in several countries over accusations of sexual abuse and forced marriages involving minors.
Among them were nine adults and 17 minors, including babies. All were foreign nationals who, officials say, arrived in Colombia in late October.
Gloria Esperanza Arriero, head of Migración Colombia, said authorities moved before any criminal warrant was issued because the situation posed an urgent welfare risk.
“The absolute priority is to guarantee the protection of the children,” she told El Tiempo. “That’s why we acted preventively, in coordination with ICBF, judicial police, GAULA, and the prosecutor’s office.”
The Lev Tahor families reportedly entered the country in two groups, on commercial flights into Medellín and Cartagena, and used the Yarumal hotel as a staging point while scouting rural property.
“They wanted to settle down to continue with their internal process: marriages between young people from the same community, some as young as 12 or 13, and encouraging them to have many children,” Arriero told Caracol Radio.
Image credits: Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images
Officials say the raid was triggered after they discovered that five of the minors carried Interpol yellow notices—alerts typically used for missing children or those at risk of abduction or trafficking.
Arriero said the notices were not active when the families entered Colombia, but that five minors with American citizenship were subsequently flagged after a report was made by their legal guardian in the U.S.
“Even though the children are with their mother or father, custody is held by a relative. He was the one who activated the international alert,” she said.
The children were transferred to protective custody in Medellín for medical and psychological evaluations while officials verify identities and family ties.
Adults were separated for immigration checks. Arriero said deportations are likely once those proceedings finish.
A sect on the move, and why Colombia mattered
Lev Tahor—“Pure Heart” in Hebrew—was founded in Israel in the 1980s and later built communities in Canada and the U.S. before shifting through Mexico, Guatemala, and other countries as it came under pressure from local authorities.
In December last year, authorities in Guatemala rescued 160 minors from a farm in Oratorio. Sect members then broke into a care center where they were being held in an attempt to get them back, leading to scuffles with police.
Prosecutors and former members have accused its leaders of coercive control, forced marriages involving young girls, and sexual abuse, prompting repeated interventions and relocations.
The Jewish sect is known for moving from country to country
Image credits: Rick Madonik/Toronto Star/Getty Images
“They’ve always looked at places where they could get away and try to set up and establish [themselves] without being hassled or have problems,” said Mike Kropveld, founder and executive director of Montreal-based Info-Cult, an organization that has monitored the group since it drew scrutiny from authorities in Canada and subsequently left the country in the early 2010s.
When Quebec youth-protection authorities began investigating, he recalled, the community “picked up in the middle of the night and they just drove over to Ontario, another province.”
Inside such a closed social system, Kropveld added, many victims go on to become victimizers, complicating efforts by authorities to intercede.
“[It] has always been difficult for authorities to comprehend and understand to what degree members of the organizations are willing to go to protect their lifestyle,” he said.
“But at the same time ... not all of them are necessarily true believers, and there may be a number of them who are basically being, you know, forced directly and indirectly to go along.”
According to Lorraine Derocher, Ph.D., a researcher at McGill University’s Centre for Research on Children and Families, a group’s level of sectarianism directly correlates with the rigidity of its ideological rhetoric.
In extreme cases, it “can lead to a complete rupture with the broader community,” she wrote in an email.
“Children are particularly vulnerable in such situations, as they are cut off from the wider world. This, coupled with other potential forms of mistreatment or neglect, poses significant risks to their well-being and social development. As a result, it becomes challenging for authorities to intervene when a group deliberately isolates children,” she wrote.
Image credits: Rick Madonik/Toronto Star/Getty Images
Closed communities and strained child-protection systems
Colombia’s mainstream Jewish leadership moved quickly to distance itself from the sect.
“Lev Tahor does not represent Judaism or its traditions,” the Confederation of Jewish Communities of Colombia (CJCC) said in a statement carried by national outlets. The group’s alleged practices, it added, are “completely contrary to Jewish tradition and to the law.”
According to Prof. Marcos Peckel, executive director of the CJCC, news that the sect had arrived in Colombia raised concerns among his organization’s members, who reject the controversial practices they are associated with.
“We, the Jewish communities of Latin America, are united in the fact that we don’t want anything to do with them and that we hope that they don’t get any hold in Latin America,” he told BP Daily.
Peckel said Jewish communities in Colombia had followed the Guatemalan case closely and welcomed the rapid intervention in Yarumal.
Community members were scouting for rural property in Yarumal
Image credits: Luis Bernardo Cano/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
“Given the swiftness of this action by the Colombian authorities, we believe that they’re ready to take any action [necessary],” he said. “We’re willing to help them with whatever they need from us should they ask for any help.”
For agencies on the front lines, the raid in Antioquia raises questions that have already tested child-protection systems elsewhere.
“One of the recommendations that emerged from our workshop (organized in Antigua in July 2025) was the creation of an international unit of cult experts that states could consult before or during such interventions,” Dominic Voisard, legal coordinator for the Guatemala office of Lawyers Without Borders Canada, wrote in an email.
“It also underscored the urgent need for states to collaborate with one another to identify affected children and to share lessons learned—particularly among those countries that have received members of Lev Tahor on their territory.”
What happens next in Colombia will depend on what medical, psychological, and legal evaluations uncover—and on how foreign courts and consulates respond to the Interpol alerts and custody disputes now at the heart of the case.