Ex-DHS Agent: 10,000 Children Trafficked Into US as Sex Slaves Each Year
About 10,000 children are smuggled into the United States every year to be sold as sex slaves, according to a former Homeland Security agent who worked in the child-trafficking unit.
For a decade of that service, I was stationed at the border office in Calexico, California,” Timothy Ballard wrote in a Jan. 30 opinion article published on the Fox News website. “Based on my extensive experience fighting transnational crime along the southern border, I know that we should absolutely finish building the wall, for the sake of the children. Ballard is now founder and CEO of Operation Underground Railroad, an organization dedicated to rescuing children from sex trafficking. “Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal enterprise on the planet, with millions of child victims stuck in its clutches,” Ballard wrote. “Indeed, this is no peripheral issue—this alone should be front and center in our border and immigration debate.” Ballard said his organization rescued a young girl who was 13 when she was kidnapped from her village in Central America and then trafficked to New York City, where she was raped 30 to 40 times a day. “Had there been a wall, Liliana’s traffickers would have likely been compelled to try their luck at any given port of entry, which are armed with advanced technology and well-trained officers,” Ballard wrote. He said at the same time the young girl was being trafficked across an unprotected part of the U.S.–Mexico border, a young boy was rescued as his kidnappers tried to smuggle him through a port of entry. The 5-year-old boy had been kidnapped in Mexicali, Mexico, and traffickers attempted to cross the border at the Calexico port of entry to California.
“Alert officers, using their sharp skills and high-tech monitoring equipment, snagged the American trafficker … rescued the boy, and then identified an entire trafficking network, allowing us to rescue many more children,” Ballard said. “The U.S. is one of the highest, if not the highest, consumers of child sex. As such, traffickers know they will become very wealthy by getting their enslaved children into our country. We do these traffickers a great favor by leaving our border virtually wide open.”
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation has collected evidence from numerous studies that prove that pornography and America’s hypersexualized culture are driving the insatiable desire for sex and the purchase of sex, including that with children.
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