First of all, human trafficking involves a variety of areas like forced labor and sexual exploitation. I’m sure you’ve seen these depicted on TV or in the movies but the mental and physical scars the
victims have can never be captured on film.
Human trafficking is second only to drug trafficking in reference to the amount of money involved. It’s estimated to amount for billions of dollars in illegal trade in the U.S. and around 32 billion around the world. There have been reported cases of kidnapping for trafficking in around 120 countries. Because of the complicated nature of this type of illegal network Cartels run most of them.
What’s most upsetting to me is that private organizations make a bigger difference in saving victims being exploited than assigned task forces around the world. In the U.S. we have a Drug Enforcement Agency but not one adequately funded that is focused solely on human trafficking.
Slave laborers work in sweat shops for twelve to fourteen hours a day and get no money for it. They are given the basics to live on but they’re rarely allowed outside because the criminals
involved don’t want to risk a laborer turning them in.
Different than the sex trade, slave laborers sometimes come over from other countries as families. It doesn’t matter what they look like, the traffickers just want to identify people who are healthy. Most of the time the victims think they are escaping from something bad to have a better life. They even give the traffickers money to sneak them into our country. So hear the bad guys are getting peoples’ money on the front end and then exploiting them when they get here.
Once in the U.S. the traffickers use leverage to keep people working and quiet. One method is they threaten to release them on the streets scaring them as to what will happen if the
authorities find them. They also tell them the money they gave to be brought to the U.S. wasn’t enough so they have to work to repay the traffickers. Lastly, they often threaten the slave labor that they’ll hurt or even kill one of their relatives back home. Needless to say they have enough tools at their disposal to keep people in line.
The sex trade is much worse as most of the girls average about 13 years of age. It’s sick but most of the men paying for sex want underage girls. It disgust me that these men know they’d go away for years for statutory rape so they find a way around it by using these slave shops.
I hate to get into gory details but I need your emotional attention. When these young girls are captured they are brought to a location where they’re indoctrinated which means they’re raped and taught what to do. When they are in the system they can average around twelve men a day
and there’s little limitation to what these men can do to them except they can’t physically hurt them so they’ll be able to handle the next client which usually arrives in around ten minutes. Just so you know these cartels can make around three million dollars per brothel with only ten sex slaves.
Sometimes the women from a particular brothel are hired out for parties. When this happens they are accompanied by a lot of body guards who surround the home to make sure no one gets away or that any of the clients get out of hand. You can just imagine how they’re treated by these men who can do anything to them including making them participate in orgies. I’d like for you to imagine something else, what if this was your daughter or sister.
I consider this issue worse than the drug trade that we spend so much money trying to deter. People in the drug trade provide product directly to the customer who knows it’s illegal and it doesn’t involve the exploitation of women. It doesn’t lead to the terrible abuse that women receive both mentally and physically.
A lot of women who were able to be saved from the sex trade mentioned that after awhile they become desensitized to the life they were in. A couple of years in and at the age of fourteen, some of them didn’t focus on escaping anymore because they were afraid of the shame when seen by family members and friends. Plus some of them are actually sold by their parents for the large amount of money the traffickers offer. Where do these young girls think they’ll go if they escape; there’s no place to run to and that just breaks my heart.
This is exactly where these pimps want them. They know these girls are so messed up psychologically plus they know that since they move the brothels around, their confident the girls will never give them a problem should they finally let them go. Add to it the fear that has been
put into them about family members getting murdered and the cartels are probably right about being safe.
I don’t know if I could imagine anything else that is as terrible as human trafficking especially sex trafficking. The world should be in an uproar regarding this. The U.S. should allocate resources
directly towards building the expertise to take down these brothels and the cartels that run them. As it is now they aren’t afraid of doing business in the U.S. because they know that no one is really paying attention. They figure if American girls aren’t being sold and raped and instead they’re from other countries that the U.S. won’t spend time and money to help the victims.
Of course I think there are numerous reasons to get involved not only to help these innocent girls but also to arrest men in the U.S. who are committing statutory rape. They know what they’re doing. They aren’t going to prostitutes they’re tapping in to the underground sex trade to rape young girls. These men need to be put away because I don’t trust them with any girls in their lives because they’re twisted. I wonder how many of them are fathers, girls soccer coaches, teachers, etc.? If they’re that sick to spend money to rape young girls then I we shouldn’t want them running around in society.
I guarantee you that if any Congressman or Senator had their 12 year-old daughter raped 12 times a day, an Anti-Sex Trade Task Force would be created in a heartbeat. It’s the usual story of it’s not a problem until it’s our problem.
The costs shouldn’t be that high because we wouldn’t need a nationwide task force as the problems are in certain cities like Miami and New York. Homeland Security could be involved as most of the people coming in are arriving on specially built cargo containers. Thermal imaging can
be used on containers that are questionable based on where the shipment came from.
This is too terrible to not do something about it as fast as we can. If it were our daughter or sister we’d not only blame our government for not doing anything but would probably be tempted to go
after the dirt bags ourselves with whatever means we had. I know the only thing that would stop me from killing one of them would be a fear of being sent to prison.
I’d like to have an update as to what our government is doing to address human trafficking in our country. There are so many young children being scarred both physically and mentally. There are so many business owners who have sweatshops and not paying their fair share of taxes. There are so many men breaking the law by participating in prostitution and statutory rape and they’re getting away with it; plus they’re a danger to our society in general. We get involved in so many human rights issues around the world shouldn’t this terrible issue be one of them? I look forward to your response.