By Pawel Styrna
FAIR
Although you wouldn’t know it from the self-styled humanitarians who claim to care about the well-being of migrants, the mass illegal migration crisis they champion exacerbates more than a few harmful social pathologies. Among these are sex trafficking and prostitution which occur both along the illegal migration routes and at the final destinations in the U.S.
The example of the brutal Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is illustrative. Millions of Venezuelans migrated to neighboring countries in South America, thus voting with their feet against the socialist Chavez-Maduro regime and the intense poverty it has generated. Tren de Aragua members were part of this outflow, and they brought with them women, usually from very poor backgrounds, whom they forced or otherwise encouraged to engage in prostitution. In Peru’s capital of Lima, Tren de Aragua began to violently muscle in on the local prostitution business, killing local prostitutes while bringing in women from Venezuela. Due to Biden-Harris open-borders policies, Tren de Aragua has expanded its criminal empire to the U.S., wreaking real havoc throughout the country and claiming American victims.
The Biden-Harris administration sent the message that migrants who could make it to the U.S. border would get to stay. This policy drew migrants northward through Panama’s Darien Gap. FAIR’s recent report on the Darien Gap has demonstrated the disturbing and heart-breaking levels of sexual violence against migrant women, including young girls, by criminals and human smugglers who prey upon them. These findings are supported by the Assessment Capacities Project, which points out, “[w]omen are mainly exposed to sexual violence, including the risk of trafficking, prostitution, or sexual abuse, inside the jungle” during the great illegal migration through the Darien Gap.
The threat of being forced into prostitution accompanies the migrants as they move further north. In November, anti-sex-trafficking activist Jaco Booyens revealed that his team had been following a group of migrants all the way from the Darien Gap to the U.S.-Mexico border. They found a logbook that had been thrown away by some of the men accompanying the migrant group, who were undoubtedly the group’s organizers and coyotes. It was “for all intents and purposes,” Booyens stated, “a slave ledger,” replete with the names of migrants, including their children, and monetary amounts assigned to each illegal alien being smuggled by ruthless criminal traffickers. Some migrants are forced to work in the sex trade to pay off debts to such smugglers. “There’s a complete lack of humanity in this document,” Booyens concluded.
This tragic reality underscores why the new administration’s promises to secure our borders, end the incentives for foreign nationals to put their lives at the mercy of ruthless criminals, and begin the process of removing Tren de Aragua and other brutal gangs from our soil are fully justified. Those genuinely concerned about the welfare and safety of women and children should support secure borders and the rule of law, rather than misguided open-borders policies that empower and enrich cartels and gangs that force women, and even children, into prostitution.
