DOJ and media efforts to bring attention to human trafficking have increased as the battle over immigration reform and amnesty has heated up. I have worked for years to help bring attention to this issue and see the current increase in coverage and the broadening of the term “human trafficking victim” as an effort by a left-of-center open-border advocates to grant “backdoor amnesty” to people who have either illegally come into the U.S. from Mexico or who overstayed their visas. Often times these advocates are funded by contracts from the Mexican Consulate and serve as de facto immigration attorneys in an overburdened court.
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My experiences with working undercover with the FBI to combat such crimes and using my home as an emergency shelter for human trafficking victims has shown me that helping such victims is complicated by the system being exploited. Liberal efforts to frame each and every illegal immigrant as a human trafficking victim, even though many individuals willfully paid human-smugglers to sneak them into the U.S., have become much more prevalent. Many are beginning to claim they were “trafficked.”
Human trafficking refers to people who were taken against their will and forced into sex or labor slavery. There are certain types of visas for trafficking victims who are not U.S. citizens; T-Visas and U-Visas are among them, which the U.S. government has made available so they can be witnesses against human traffickers in court.
The immigration courts are already overwhelmed to such an extent that non-attorneys are now allowed to act as immigration attorneys in the courts. Many of these non-attorneys have long histories of helping illegal immigrants, and many of them have contracts with the Mexican Consulate — doing anything and everything to find any possible way to allow Mexican nationals who entered the U.S. illegally to stay and obtain U.S. citizenship, including helping them receive benefits and entitlements set aside for actual human trafficking victims.
I have seen individuals who willfully entered the U.S. illegally be allowed to stay because they claimed to have been mistreated at a place of work, evidenced only by the individuals’ testimonies. Even simply “feeling” they have been underpaid for work, many illegal immigrants are then labeled “human trafficking victims.” Ultimately, the illegal immigrants’ advocates are able to find a federal agent to sign the appropriate documentation claiming they are “an interest to a law enforcement case” and they are allowed to stay in the U.S., obtain a green card, and eventually obtain U.S. citizenship. Even if law enforcement never charges anyone or investigates the case, they receive the benefits that were set aside for actual witnesses in a legal case against human traffickers.
The systems our nation has put in place to protect victims of human trafficking and to hold the perpetrators of such crimes accountable have become exploited entitlements by many who see “borders” as unfair human constructs and wealth as not “justly and fairly” distributed. Another recent example of such aid efforts being exploited was provided by Breitbart News’ Lee Stranahan involving the abuse of our nation’s asylum program. Stranahan’s investigation further revealed that instructions for exploiting the system in such a way were made available by the Obama administration’s DHS.
Follow Brandon Darby on Twitter: @BrandonDarby