[Photo: Border Wall, Ciudad Juárez, Chih., México by David Peinado]

Since the implementation of the Biden-Harris administration’s open border policies in 2021, Shepherd’s Watch Foundation (SWF), an anti-trafficking organization in Frisco, Texas, has seen migrant sex-trafficking nearly double with the primary victims being young girls and women.

“Anytime we see an influx of groups from certain countries coming across the border, it doesn’t take long before we see these victims in sex ads,” SWF’s Lead Investigator, Lisa, told Kitchen Counter Conversations (KCC) on Friday.

According to Lisa, closing the border needs to be an absolute priority.

“The most important thing to curb the trafficking problem right now is to close the border,” she stated.

SWF is made up of private investigators and victim advocates who partner with law enforcement to track sex-trafficking rings and assist sex crime victims.

The private investigators who work for SWF investigate online sex ads and sex-trafficking ring locations.

Once information is gathered, they work in cohesion with law enforcement to take down the most prevalent rings.

In the last four years, SWF has seen a significant increase in the number and size of sex-trafficking rings, which can be directly connected to regional cartels.

“As far as trafficking as a whole increasing, yes, it has because the cartels that control trafficking in their region have increased in numbers of rings and in the size of rings…the majority of the rings that we see are organized crime,” Lisa explained.

She went on to describe how migrants frequently find themselves indebted to the cartel, which makes them especially vulnerable to recruitment into sex-trafficking.

While sex-trafficking has always been pervasive, under the Trump administration’s border policies, the number of migrants being sex-trafficked through online ads monitored by SWF was nearly half of what it is now.

The number of ads “in the last four years…went up exponentially. We saw a huge increase in migrant trafficking and platforms dedicated to certain ethnicities,” said Lisa, “That increase is up to 90%.”

According to Lisa, it is crucial for legislation to be put in place that better enables the arrest and prosecution of traffickers.

With closing the border being the priority, the second step needs to be to “enable our district attorneys to prosecute cases and our law enforcement officers to make arrests. Legislative initiatives are the key to protecting victims and prosecuting trafficking rings,” she stated.

While SWF primarily sees women and young girls being advertised for sex, male trafficking is also becoming more prevalent.

According to a report led by the International Labour Organization, the Walk Free Foundation, and the International Organization for Migration, it was estimated that 6.3 million people were being exploited in the commercial sex trade worldwide in 2021 “on any given day.”