Tim Ballard, the former Homeland Security agent whose incredible work is recounted in the summer blockbuster movie “Sound of Freedom,” today offered stark testimony about the plight of child trafficking spurred by the chaos at the US southern border and the United States’ concerning role in the sex tourism industry at a congressional hearing chaired by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), a longtime leader in the fight against human trafficking.

            “The United States is generally understood to be the #1 consumer of child exploitation material in the world, and a major contributor to the abhorrent sex tourism industry around the world, and policies here at home have a ripple effect throughout the world,” said Ballard, who recently met with Honduran President Xiomara Castro and Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei.

            Ballard said the Central American leaders are warning their own people against the dangerous practice of submitting to smugglers and traffickers but “the Biden Administration policies make it too alluring, and the smugglers or traffickers, who can make up to $14M a day, are too convincing.”

            “Tragically, the problem of child trafficking is rampant in the United States,” said Smith, who earlier this week introduced the SECURE Act aimed at compelling the Biden Administration to locate the approximately 85,000 unaccompanied migrant children it has lost contact with in the United States who are at grave risk of death, labor and sex trafficking and other abuses.

            “Child predators it turns out are everywhere—on the prowl, kidnapping, buying or renting children to exploit,” said Smith, the author of five major laws to combat trafficking. “The child predators never waste a crisis and are especially skilled in taking advantage of conflict, poverty, lawlessness, internally displaced persons and refuges and migrants.”

            “There are serious well-founded concerns that unaccompanied minors coming across our southern border may be the new victims,” said Smith, who noted at least 345,000 children from other countries have crossed the US southern border unaccompanied since early 2021.

            Smith’s hearing—entitled “Children are Not for Sale: Global Efforts to Address Child Trafficking”—also included heart-wrenching and compelling testimony from survivor-expert Jeanne Celestine Lakin, a survivor of child trafficking and a Rwandan genocide survivor who shares her story in her memoir A Voice in the Darkness.

            “At the end of the genocide, I was captured by a man who not only physically abused me, but verbally, and sexually raped me as a nine year old,” Lakin said. “This man decided that he would actually migrate to Congo with me, and it was in the Congo where he was negotiating with adult men how much money I was worth to be sold into marriage—and at that time I was 10 years old.”

            “My testimony bears witness to the unimaginable horrors of the Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsis, but it also serves as a stark reminder of the urgent need for robust policies to protect children from the scourge of trafficking, particularly in times of conflict,” said Lakin.

            “We must prioritize policies that shield them from the clutches of trafficking and falling in the hands of smugglers,” Lakin said. “Let us work together to make a better, safer world for all children, where no one endures the horrors that I and so many others have endured.”

            Over 27 million people around the world are enslaved in forced labor or sex trafficking on any given day, and estimates indicate nearly one third of all trafficking victims are children—although the true number may be much higher.

            In 2016, Smith authored International Megan’s Law to combat child sex tourism by notifying destination countries when convicted pedophiles plan to travel. Smith’s law was named after Megan Kanka, a little girl who lived in his hometown and was sexually assaulted and murdered in 1994 by a pedophile who lived across the street without anyone knowing about his background.

            At the hearing, Ballard told Smith that the presidents of Honduras and Guatemala both brought up International Megan’s Law to him at his recent meetings with them: “They were so proud, and they gave me the numbers of how many alerts they’re getting from the US government and they know it’s preventing child sex abuse.”

            “And so, from the presidents of both Honduras and Guatemala, they sent me to thank you, Chairman Smith, and all those who sponsored that bipartisan bill, because it’s saving lives,” said Ballard.

            “Make no mistake, the war against human trafficking cartels and their allies is going to be long, difficult, and hard fought, but—ultimately—we can and must win,” Ballard said. “Congressman Smith’s The SECURE Act in particular will help find these kids that this administration claims are not ‘their problem’ anymore, despite being at acute risk of sexual abuse.”

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