Yarumal Hotel Raid Exposes Lev Tahor Sect Cell in Colombia

• 🚨 Authorities rescued 17 minors in a hotel in Yarumal, Antioquia, tied to the sect Lev Tahor.

• 🛂 Five of the children held by the group had active Interpol “yellow” alerts for risk of disappearance or trafficking.

• 🌍 The sect has a documented global trail: Canada, Guatemala, Mexico, with a history of forced marriages and child-abuse convictions.

• 🏨 The cell apparently entered Colombia and planned to establish roots in Antioquia while remaining under the radar.

• 📍 For high-end travellers, expats and digital nomads in Medellín this incident raises questions about immigration oversight, hotel security and hidden risks in the region.

Before I get started on this, I won't tolerate any antisemitism at all. This group is a radical extremist group, and in no way represents the pillars of the Medellin community that happen to be Jewish. This is for you to know the truth about what is going on around you. There are plenty of examples within every group that are bad, and they don't speak for everyone, just as these scumbags don't speak for all Jewish people.

A major law enforcement operation in Yarumal has opened a conversation that Medellín’s expat and travel crowd should pay close attention to. Migration Colombia and the Military Gaula raided a hotel that looked like a quiet religious retreat and found 26 foreign nationals connected to Lev Tahor, a small extremist sect with a long global history of abuse cases, forced marriages, and child disappearances. Seventeen of the people were minors, five of them had active Interpol yellow alerts, which only appear when a child is considered to be at serious risk.

Yarumal is about 125km from Medellin, roughly a 2.5 hour drive north/northeast of the Medellin metroplex. It's not a small town, as it has 42k residents, and is known for being the local area's hub for agriculture which includes livestock and coffee production.

The group had entered Colombia only weeks earlier, and according to officials, they entered from the United States, Canada and Guatemala and appeared to be settling in Antioquia with plans to create a clandestine new base far from the investigations they face in other countries. Their arrival went unnoticed in Yarumal until reports surfaced about minors with missing documents and adults who were giving inconsistent stories about their purpose in the country.

The raid caught people off guard because the hotel sits right in the center of town. Local residents assumed the visitors were part of a religious gathering since the booking had been registered as such. What authorities found instead was a closed community with strict internal controls, limited movement and children kept away from outside contact. All members of the group were transferred to the Migración facility in Medellín where the ICBF brought in social workers, psychologists and protective teams to assess the minors.

The history in other places makes this incident even more serious. Lev Tahor has been pushed out of multiple countries over cases involving child abuse, underage marriages and psychological control. Leaders of the group have been convicted in the United States on kidnapping and forced marriage charges. Guatemala removed more than a hundred minors from a Lev Tahor compound in 2024 after reports of mistreatment and trafficking. Canada, Mexico and the U.S. have all investigated them in the past ten years. The group’s presence in Antioquia raises questions about how they slipped into Colombia and how long they planned to stay. I have many questions about how they got into Antioquia so easily.

For people who live in Medellín or travel here for wellness, luxury tourism or medical procedures, this event creates a different type of conversation. The city is safe when you understand how to read situations and follow safety protocols, and this case highlights how a foreign group with a documented track record managed to enter the country and settle quietly in a small Antioquia town without raising alarms.

Just a short list of my questions - Who approved the booking and why was it labeled a religious retreat? Did anyone verify the documents of the adults and minors who checked in? How did they enter the country undetected with 17 minors? Should small or boutique hotel have a process to catch strange group bookings that claim to be spiritual retreats but do not match normal patterns? How can this be prevented?

This isn't about paranoia. it's about awareness. The expat and tourism community in Medellín is growing exponentially fast, which means sometimes bad actors will come through the region from time to time. A few travelers, like this case, arrive hoping to disappear into the background, to settle into a blind spot. We can't allow Medellin, Antioquia and Colombia to be somewhere that these people feel comfortable hiding. Anyone that hurts children deserves no peace, nor freedom or life in my opinion.

Local investigators are now trying to understand who brought the group to Yarumal, whether anyone in the area assisted them and whether they were planning to expand. The minors are currently under state protection and receiving medical and psychological evaluations. Their rescue likely prevented further harm, given the Interpol alerts and the sect’s past behavior in other countries.

If you spend time in the Antioquia countryside you know how easy it is to romanticize peaceful retreats and wellness stays. That doesn't change the fact that foreign groups sometimes look for quiet towns to avoid attention. You can still enjoy the mountains, the boutique stays and the small towns, but you should ask the right questions when something feels off. Trust your instincts, and being informed will help you hone your instincts about what is a cultural difference and when something is way off. That is how you protect yourself and how you help keep the region safe for everyone.

This isn't a reason to panic, nor is it a reason to try lump everyone into a group they don't need to be a part of. We all need to work together to keep this place safe. If something feels off, call the Fiscalia. If you are afraid or don't know how/don't speak Spanish well, email me. You can do it anonymously through a throwaway email address like Mailinator, send me an email at medellinunfiltered@gmail.com, and I'll forward it my contact within the Fiscalia. If you do this, please give as much information as you can. If you live here or visit here frequently, it's on us to hold the bad actors among us accountable. Nobody that hurts children regardless of national origin deserves freedom. Speak up if something feels off.

Hug your kids if you have them and keep your eyes open, please. Someone's life might depend on it.

Shoutout to the Open Minded Traveler (https://openmindedtraveler.com/) for being a resource on this one.

The Confederation of Jewish Communities in Colombia released a statement today denouncing the Lev Tahor sect: