Trump Administration Cracks Down on Sex-Trafficking Rings

Sex trafficking is America’s fastest-growing criminal enterprise. Forced labor and prostitution among migrant children more than tripled under President Joe Biden’s watch. The Biden-Harris administration allowed over 450,000 unaccompanied children to be brought illegally over the United States-Mexico border. So President Donald Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are cracking down on sex-trafficking rings.

“The evil of human trafficking cannot be overstated,” said Secretary Noem on July 30. “It’s modern-day slavery. By leaving our borders open and even encouraging people to come here illegally, Biden enabled the largest human-trafficking operation in modern history. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to eradicate human trafficking operations targeting the United States. Under the leadership of President Donald Trump, and working together at every level of government, we can win this fight. And we will.”

After discovering the Biden administration lost track of 300,000 migrant children, the Trump administration went in search of them. Noem’s department has already located 13,000 of these lost children. Many of them had been placed with smugglers and sex traffickers. Noem is now working through a backlog of more than 65,000 reports regarding children who came across the border unaccompanied that were ignored during the Biden administration, and actively investigating 4,000 leads on missing children.

In particular, the Trump administration is targeting the Venezuelan criminal terrorist gang Tren de Aragua, which enriches itself through sex trafficking vulnerable young women. It has arrested 2,700 members of the Tren de Aragua gang so far and is going after other drug cartels and trafficking networks as well.

Most of the media focus on sex trafficking right now is on the Epstein files, a set of classified documents on the now-dead Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire who lured around 250 teenagers and young women into the illicit massage industry. Senate Democrats are trying to compel the Trump administration to release more files related to Epstein’s case. Yet while the attempt to get to the bottom of the Epstein case is underway, it is important that the nation not forget about other forms of sex trafficking in America.

During Trump’s first administration, the government issued an average of 625 letters per year to migrant minors who escaped their traffickers. That number jumped to over 2,000 during the Biden administration. So drug cartels traffic 10 times more sex slaves in a year than Epstein did in his nearly three-decade career.

One of the groups helping track down missing children in Texas is the Shepherd’s Watch Foundation. This group gathered data from sex ads on the dark web, flagging hotspots when multiple ads pointed to a single location. “I think our typical [age] range in the rings is probably 14, 15,” one agent told the Daily Caller. “We know there’s 12- and 13-year-olds. It used to be that you’d see the minors on the sites. Occasionally we still do. When you go out and look at the sites, we have tools that tell us whether or not it’s a scam or fake ad.”

Shepherd’s Watch highlights the role of drug cartels in the sex trade, highlighting that nearly all sex-trafficking victims who come across are illegal immigrants. It also highlights the demand side of the equation. Drug cartels may be smuggling immigrants into America, but Americans are paying $150 for 30 minutes with an immigrant girl, many of whom are still in their teens. This is the vilest sort of evil. A study based on the General Social Survey found that roughly 16 percent of men in the U.S. have acknowledged paying for sex with a woman at some point in their lives, and some estimate that up to 20 percent of pornography on the Internet involves depictions of children. So potentially millions are involved in these vile crimes.

“Rank perversion, wickedness, and sin have infected this society and the leaders it has produced,” Trumpet managing editor Stephen Flurry wrote in “The Problem Is Far Bigger Than Epstein.” “America is morally and spiritually sick. Now children are the victims—and still we will not draw the line!”

Deporting 2,700 Tren de Aragua gang members will undoubtedly help cut down on sex trafficking. Still, the problem won’t go away until the people using prostitutes are also brought to justice. As with drug trafficking, sex trafficking is a supply-and-demand business. America is currently trying to reduce demand by cutting people off at the supply, but the root cause of the problem is spiritual.

In short, America needs to repent of the sexual perversion that has infected all levels of society.

To learn more, read “Slavery Is a Modern Problem. Here Is the Solution.”