By Clark Bailey

The Loyalist

My Administration will focus on ending the absolutely horrific practice of human trafficking. And I am prepared to bring the full force and weight of our government, whatever we can do, in order to solve this horrific problem. — President Donald J. Trump

Every year, hundreds of thousands of kids go missing in the United States. Some figure even calculate one child goes missing every 40 seconds. The FBI put those numbers at 424,066 for 2018. The numbers for 2017 were 464,324. Or in other words, roughly a half a million kids per year go missing in this country alone.

By any calculation or metric, those are staggering numbers. This does not even take into account the numbers related to human trafficking, sex trafficking or white slavery. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reports the percentage of child victims had risen in a three-year span from 20 percent to 27 percent.

Of every three child victims, two are girls and one is a boy. Gender and age profile of victims detected globally: 59 percent women, 14 percent men, 17 percent girls and 10 percent were boys. According to the same organization, here are some facts related to the international human trafficking crisis:

• 600,000 to 800,000 women, children and men bought and sold across international borders every year and exploited for forced labor or commercial sex (U.S. Government);

• When internal trafficking victims are added to the estimates, the number of victims annually is in the range of 2 to 4 million;

• 50 percent of those victims are estimated to be children;

• It is estimated that 76 percent of transactions for sex with underage girls start on the Internet;

• 2 million children are subjected to prostitution in the global commercial sex trade (UNICEF).

There are 20.9 million victims of trafficking worldwide as of 2012, 1.5 million victims in the United States. As I stated earlier, the numbers are truly mind-boggling. Frightening is also a word that comes to mind. The U.S. Department of Justice has estimates of anywhere between 35,000 to 170,000 entering into the country illegally every single year.

In light of recent news stories and events, it seems those numbers could be on the low end. They also estimate that at least 20,000 of those persons are victims of human trafficking/sex slavery, with a good portion of them being children.

Recent news articles have confirmed much of this as many children detained with people claiming to be their parents ended up not being genetically related, at all. This should give pause to anyone with a modicum of common sense in regards to how freely people cross our southern border. This phenomenon has moved ahead of international arms trafficking in sheer numbers and is poised to eclipse the drug trade, even though all three are intrinsically linked.

The situation at the border, as dire as it may be, is at least matched by the number of victims here domestically. In fact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children offered up the numbers for 2018:

• 92 percent endangered runaways;

• 4 percent family abductions;

• 3 percent critically missing young adults, ages 18 to 20;

• Less than 1 percent non family abductions;

• 1 percent lost, injured or otherwise missing children.

Of the more than 23,500 runaways reported to NCMEC in 2018, one in seven were likely victims of child sex trafficking. These numbers, once again, illustrate the prevalence of the problem within our country. Since President Trump has took office, there seems to be a proliferation, not only of the problem but of arrests and action taken in regards to the human slavery problem. In fact, according to the White House’s web page: the United States is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children – both United States citizens and foreign nationals – victimized by human trafficking.

In FY 2017, DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (ICE/HSI) initiated 833 human trafficking cases, resulting in 1,602 arrests and 578 convictions, and identified 518 victims of human trafficking.

The HHS-funded National Human Trafficking Hotline (NHTH) received reports of 8,686 unique cases of potential trafficking in FY 2017, identifying 21,644 potential victims. In fact, one can spot at least a story every other day where an investigation has foiled a human trafficking operation or saved victims of an operation. Sometimes the stories are more filled with sadness instead of hope, but either way no one can escape them unless they make a concerted effort to do so. And trying to escape this issue is something we must not do. Anyone and everyone must band together to attack this problem, not just law enforcement and the courts, but each and every community must make every effort to stomp out human trafficking and slavery.

When I was a young man, probably around 20, there was popular music video making the rounds on MTV. The song, “Runaway Train” by Soul Asylum featured of nightmarish narrative of missing children/runaways and all the evil that befell them juxtaposed against images of actual missing children and the date of which they had been missing. This had a profound effect on me at the time being young and not realizing the gravity of such a problem and how scary it could be, because it wasn’t something exotic and foreign but happening to people who looked just like you, or me.

I encourage you to look the song up, and give it a view. I encourage you to look into the problem both through trafficking at the border and runaway/kidnappings domestically, and to endeavor to help. Volunteer in some way. Create a group organization that can help with the problem in some way. Be vigilant, report situations that need me to law enforcement. Most importantly, keep a close eye and protect your children and those around you, and pray earnestly for those working to end the horror and or the victims.

Here are some links on the web for further research and discussion and the basis or many of my statistics:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-working-end-human-trafficking/

http://www.missingkids.com/footer/media/keyfacts

https://arkofhopeforchildren.org