Sex Trafficking Across the Border

Thousands of children are trafficked into the United States every year, many of whom are forced into the most horrific form of slavery that exists: the sex trade.  The foreign that are targeted by traffickers in other nations often come from a life of poverty and broken families.  The traffickers work to gain the trust of these vulnerable children and offer are to take them to America, luring them with the promise of good work and stability.  

Though these children can be smuggled in from any nation, Mexico and other Latin American nations are particular favorites for traffickers to seek out children for the sex trade.  Tens of thousands of children are trafficked in the United States every year, 30% of them are trafficked across the Mexican border.  

A number of young children who have been rescued by NGO's and Law Enforcement Agencies have testified that they were either kidnapped, or coerced by the traffickers into going across the southern border with them with the promise of good jobs and stability.  One young boy testified that sometime after his mother died, a Mexican-American in a van came to him and convinced him to come with him to America for work.  Using false papers, the trafficker took the young boy through the Tijuana crossing and took him to a boarded up house in Oceanside CA and sold to a pimp who ran that house.  For years, this young boy was locked up in that house with several other children that were smuggled across the border.  Every day, "clients" came in and raped him and those other children, and they had no way out.  One child couldn't take it anymore and slashed his wrists.  This pimp tortured these children, both mentally and physically, to keep them in line and to dissuade any inkling of trying to escape.  This poor child was locked up in there for years, until one day the pimp let his guard down, and hand and another child managed to escape out a window and alert the police.  

Unfortunately, this little boy's story is not an isolated one.  Children throughout Mexico are kidnapped and brought over the border.  Sometimes the traffickers don't even need false papers, they know which areas of the border are open & free of border patrols.  A young Mexican girl was recently rescued from sex trafficking in NYC when she was 17.  She testified that she was taken across the border when she was 12 years old, sent to NYC, sold to a pimp, & forced into sex slavery for five years.  During her time as a sex slave, she was raped over 60,000 times!  

This border sex trafficking of children is a very real, and truly horrible reality.  A number of these freed victims have testified that if there was tougher border security, that there is a very strong chance that they could have been saved from all their years of hell.  If we truly wish to help put an end to this terrible slave trade, we have to accept the reality that securing our border will help save lives.  Many are not aware of this, but the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is responsible for bringing down more pedophile sex rings than any other Law Enforcement Branch in the country.  This should serve as a dire warning to activists and politicians who believe that ICE should be abolished.  


Sources:

Belles, Nita.  In Our Backyard: Human Trafficking in America and what We can do to Stop It.  Grand Rapids, Baker Books, 2015.

Interview with Tim Ballard: Founder of Operation Underground Railroad

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