Government Investigation Confirms Children are Trafficked in the U.S. – Modern Day Slavery

The trafficking of children and sexual slavery world-wide is a global epidemic. Most of the public's image of such horrific examples of modern-day slavery evoke images of poorer countries where this problem is well-documented. However, a new government investigation confirms that the problem of trafficking children and modern-day child slavery is a very real problem right here within our own borders. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) recently published a six-month investigation looking at 125,000 unaccompanied minors who have crossed the U.S. borders into the United States since 2011, reportedly fleeing violence and unrest in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. This U.S. Senate report concluded that the Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has failed to protect these children from human trafficking, leaving them vulnerable to abuses at the hands of government-approved caretakers. While it is good that the issue of unaccompanied alien children being brought into the United States by organized trafficking rings is getting some public exposure in the mainstream media and Congress, the broader issue of child trafficking and sexual slavery of all children in the United States is one that does not get much press or attention from politicians. Every day in the United Sates, children are being ripped away from their parents and trafficked through organizations that are for the most part legal.