Biden’s Border Crisis Has Had An Impact On Human Trafficking Business

As the Biden administration marks National Human Trafficking Prevention Month, former Homeland Security officials say the crisis at the southern border is exacerbating criminal activity and the only answer is to secure the border.

In December the Biden administration released an updated national plan to fight human trafficking. Last week, President Biden issued a presidential proclamation for Human Trafficking Prevention Month, which is recognized in January.

“Human trafficking — whether in the form of forced labor, sex trafficking, or other offenses — is an abhorrent abuse of power and a profoundly immoral crime that strikes at the safety, health, and dignity of millions of people worldwide,” President Biden said in a presidential proclamation to mark National Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

“During National Human Trafficking Prevention Month, we reaffirm our commitment to protect and empower survivors of all forms of human trafficking, to prosecute traffickers, and to bring an end to human trafficking in the United States and around the world,” he said.

But former DHS officials say the ongoing migrant crisis at the border should be the top priority if shutting down trafficking is the goal.

“When you don’t take immigration enforcement on the border seriously, and you don’t take immigration enforcement seriously in the interior, human trafficking is going to expand and a lot of people are going to get away with it because there isn’t a focus on it,” former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Thomas Homan said Tuesday.

“When you increase the number of people being smuggled, the increase in trafficking goes along with that, so if they’re really, really serious not just about addressing and reacting to trafficking if they’re really serious about trying to prevent it, they’d secure our borders,” former acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan said Wednesday.

A former senior ICE official said there is a lack of coordination between agencies and the criminal enterprises are taking advantage of that.

“A trafficking victim can be smuggled and a smugglee can turn into a trafficking victim so we need to be more coordinated on how we do this,” they said.

“You have victims out there that are not being rescued because we’re not even focusing on immigration.”

The report also says that Mexico is the top origin country in human trafficking cases involving foreign national victims where the United States is the destination. It cites recent cases where young victims were trafficked by enterprises linked to a region in Central Mexico, and then smuggled into the U.S. and forced into sex acts in New York, Atlanta, and elsewhere in the U.S.

Under the Biden administration, the border has seen more than 100,000 migrant encounters, and sometimes more than double that, each month. The focus has been on quickly processing migrants into the interior rather than keeping them in border facilities.

The former DHS officials said the crisis is leading not only to more victims being trafficked, but also agents who are exhausted and overwhelmed and are less likely to spot someone being trafficked. They said that with agents having less time to speak to victims, it is more difficult to identify them, particularly children who at one time would have been DNA tested to see if they are related to those adults bringing them across as an alleged family unit.

“A lot of people being smuggled, they are being trafficked at the same time, they just don’t know it until it’s too late,” Morgan said.

“What I can tell you is the border being out of control like it is, we don’t know how many potential trafficking victims we have coming in,” the former ICE official said. “I can’t give you specifics, but I can tell you we’ve identified individuals who have come in, become victims of trafficking, or were victims of human trafficking when they crossed the southwest border. The fact that the administration has been doing catch and release like they have has increased the potential to get trafficking victims into the United States.”

“Human trafficking isn’t just about sex trafficking, it’s about forced labor and other things too and many times at ICE we would uncover forced labor trafficking situations by conducting worksite enforcement operations and worksite enforcement investigations, but [DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas] has pretty much told ICE ‘you will not conduct worksite enforcement investigations.’”

The White House plan is calling for immigration authorities to improve screening of all migrants who pass through immigration custody or detention for indicators of human trafficking. It also makes it a priority for immigration protections to be in place to make sure trafficking victims are not deported.

But Morgan, who accused the White House plan as being “all show” said it’s obvious what needs to be done if the administration is serious about ending human trafficking.

“When you increase the number of people being smuggled, the increase in trafficking goes along with that, so if they’re really, really serious not just about addressing and reacting to trafficking if they’re really serious about trying to prevent it, they’d secure our borders,” he said.