An estimated 50 million people are trapped in modern-day slavery.
I was first exposed to human trafficking during my 26 years of service in the U.S. Coast Guard. I conducted interdiction operations targeting human smugglers and traffickers and investigated trafficking involving children.
Human trafficking involves the exploitation of people through labor or services through force, coercion, or fraud. There are countless stories around the country of those trapped in sex slavery — they are drugged, assaulted, extorted, and abused. And this is just one of many ways that one can be trafficked. It’s an evil that is hard for most of us to comprehend.
Though trafficking happens everywhere, the lack of effective security at the U.S. southern border incentivizes it in a way that Americans don’t truly realize.
For the past five years, I’ve conducted research in Central and South America and have spoken with former human traffickers incarcerated in U.S. and Central American prisons to gain a deeper understanding of human trafficking. I found human smugglers work closely with cartels and take advantage of migrants’ situations by tacking on additional charges for passing cartel checkpoints, bribing Mexican officials to keep quiet, and other “transportation fees,” which can be whatever smugglers feel like they want to add to the bill.
When the migrants can’t pay up, they are often trafficked into forced labor. These individuals are moved through a series of stash houses until they can “pay off” their debts. It’s a process that can take years.
After years of researching human trafficking, I took my research a step further last year with a trip to the southern border facilitated by Americans for Prosperity Foundation. What I saw there changed my life.
We spoke to some recently arrived immigrants, and their stories were absolutely heart-wrenching. One person told me the Sinaloa cartel kidnapped him and his family. They were only released after their family wired money to the cartel via Western Union.
Another person watched as two people were sexually assaulted and murdered because they couldn’t pay the cartel. One woman we saw clutched her child and refused to let him out of her arms, even though she was in a safe location. She explained to shelter staff that the Gulf cartel had kidnapped her other two children because she couldn’t pay their extortion fee. Where they are or what happened to them is unknown. The child in her arms was all she had left.
Since Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s border trip, I’m not only concerned with shedding light on and ending human trafficking. I now see trafficking as a sad reality of weak border security and a convoluted immigration system.
Combating trafficking at the border will take comprehensive reform. Congress must look to both secure the border and streamline legal migration processes by enhancing enforcement efforts, focusing on reducing illegal crossings, and improving legal channels for both permanent and temporary migration.
Unfortunately, because we make it so difficult to migrate legally, we incentivize millions of people to enter the U.S. illegally, putting them in the direct path of deadly cartels. There’s a harsh reality at the border: what begins as a desperate attempt to be smuggled across the border often escalates into human trafficking. When unexpected expenses arise, a dangerous agreement quickly spirals into something far worse, trapping innocent lives in the grip of exploitation through human trafficking.
With better access to legal channels, there would be less chaos at the border and fewer people to traffic. Border Patrol could then focus its attention on the cartels that are exploiting human beings on both sides of the border.
Congress, meanwhile, can get the ball rolling by increasing Border Patrol staffing and equipping agents with advanced technology for improved detection and tracking. With approximately 16,000 to 17,000 officers managing the 1,954-mile border, additional personnel, infrastructure, and technology are vital to support their efforts and boost morale.
Since having my eyes opened to the horrors and realities migrants are experiencing due to a broken immigration system, I have done my best to bring awareness to this crisis, through official testimony to the U.S. Senate about the exploitation that is occurring and by serving as a consultant for committees in both the Senate and House to keep them informed. Congress has the responsibility of fixing this mess.
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And we have a responsibility to our own country and to our fellow human beings to eliminate the incentives and weaknesses traffickers are taking advantage of at the southern border.
Human trafficking is travesty, but it’s one that we can fight with comprehensive reforms that are good for our country and good for those seeking to emigrate.
Jarrod Sadulski is a criminologist and veteran of the United States Coast Guard who has spent much of his career combatting human trafficking. He has testified before the United States Senate and the United States Congress through the Committee on Homeland Security about the humanitarian crisis and threat of trafficking at the southern border.