UNITED STATES - An anti-sex trafficking activist says that a ledger of victims found at the southern border shows just how calculated smuggling groups are with the humans they are trafficking.
Fox News Digital spoke with Jaco Booyens, who is a director and anti-trafficking activist, about a document he found among a group of migrants, mostly women and children. His team followed the group from the Darien Gap, through Mexico, and into the United States where they were encountered by Border Patrol in Texas.
He said that as some men in the group fled, the logbook ended up being discarded and picked up by his team. He said, "It's for all intents and purposes, it's a slave ledger." Booyens, who has been sounding the alarm about smuggling and the trafficking of women and children into the United States through the southern border, said that the book is typical of smugglers and shows the names of the children being moved across the border, and how much is still owed.
He said, "This is how they operate. It's around $8,500 is the sum. And then whatever portion they can pay. Now, some of the families here pay $50," adding that they will then owe the rest at a high interest rate to the gangs. He said that the discovery of the ledger showed the lack of a human element of what the smugglers were dealing with.
Booyens said, "It's never been this brazen to where really when you read through this, and you translate it, it's numbers on a page. There's a complete lack of humanity in this document. When you read a document and it's names of children and their ages, and you start seeing monetary value next to them, you know, it's a reality we live through, but the American public don't understand how human lives are commoditized."
He stressed how illegal immigrants who are brought in are not then left by the cartels but are tracked, and will be forced to pay back the money they owe, whether that be through prostitution or other forms of labor. If they don't check in, they or their family members in their home country could be at risk of violence.
He said, "The traffickers know where they are. They have a ledger on them and they check in. They check in like you do with a parole officer because they are fearful for their family's lives back home, and they pay a debt. They have a debt to pay, so the system is very organized from that perspective."
He added, "It's just stark to get a ledger with the names and say, 'Hey, this guy has X amount of children on his booked and he's going to collect.'" In terms of what can be done to stop the smuggling, Booyens noted a "vicious" demand cycle for children from Americans, but he said that the laws of the United States must also be followed to stop incentivizing migrants from crossing the border illegally.
He said, "We got to just start with just letting the law be the law. We have immigration law, albeit it needs reform. Yes, but we do have law, and the law has been abandoned."
Fox News Digital spoke with Jaco Booyens, who is a director and anti-trafficking activist, about a document he found among a group of migrants, mostly women and children. His team followed the group from the Darien Gap, through Mexico, and into the United States where they were encountered by Border Patrol in Texas.
He said that as some men in the group fled, the logbook ended up being discarded and picked up by his team. He said, "It's for all intents and purposes, it's a slave ledger." Booyens, who has been sounding the alarm about smuggling and the trafficking of women and children into the United States through the southern border, said that the book is typical of smugglers and shows the names of the children being moved across the border, and how much is still owed.
He said, "This is how they operate. It's around $8,500 is the sum. And then whatever portion they can pay. Now, some of the families here pay $50," adding that they will then owe the rest at a high interest rate to the gangs. He said that the discovery of the ledger showed the lack of a human element of what the smugglers were dealing with.
Booyens said, "It's never been this brazen to where really when you read through this, and you translate it, it's numbers on a page. There's a complete lack of humanity in this document. When you read a document and it's names of children and their ages, and you start seeing monetary value next to them, you know, it's a reality we live through, but the American public don't understand how human lives are commoditized."
He stressed how illegal immigrants who are brought in are not then left by the cartels but are tracked, and will be forced to pay back the money they owe, whether that be through prostitution or other forms of labor. If they don't check in, they or their family members in their home country could be at risk of violence.
He said, "The traffickers know where they are. They have a ledger on them and they check in. They check in like you do with a parole officer because they are fearful for their family's lives back home, and they pay a debt. They have a debt to pay, so the system is very organized from that perspective."
He added, "It's just stark to get a ledger with the names and say, 'Hey, this guy has X amount of children on his booked and he's going to collect.'" In terms of what can be done to stop the smuggling, Booyens noted a "vicious" demand cycle for children from Americans, but he said that the laws of the United States must also be followed to stop incentivizing migrants from crossing the border illegally.
He said, "We got to just start with just letting the law be the law. We have immigration law, albeit it needs reform. Yes, but we do have law, and the law has been abandoned."
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