CBP, ICE, State and Local Law Enforcement Team Up to Fight the Dark Underbelly of the Super Bowl: Human Trafficking

Folks all around the nation will rejoice Tremendous Bowl LV on Sunday, however for a lot of, it carries a a lot darker connotation — intercourse trafficking. Up to now, it has been estimated that roughly 10,000 victims are trafficked into cities that host the Tremendous Bowl through the week of the occasion.

Provide and demand is on the coronary heart of this disgusting enterprise.
Massive sporting occasions, political conventions, conferences, massive vacation
locations, or any variety of different main occasions draw traffickers to the realm,
particularly gatherings the place attendance is male dominated. Like another
trade, human traffickers are pushed by cash and are searching for locations the place
their market will flourish. Sadly, the Tremendous Bowl creates the proper alternative
for traffickers as it’s largely male attended, individuals have massive quantities of money,
and loads of further time.

Whereas the Tremendous Bowl will look a little bit totally different this 12 months as a consequence of continued coronavirus restrictions, United States Customs and Border Safety (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) play essential roles that get little or no consideration. Along with monitoring for human trafficking at airports and our nation’s borders, CBP and ICE’s Homeland Safety Investigations (HSI) personnel are partnering with native, state and federal legislation enforcement within the Tampa Bay space, the place the sport is being performed this 12 months. Each ICE and CBP have a “long-standing relationship with the NFL to guard in opposition to terrorist threats, financial fraud, transnational crime and a bunch of different prison exercise.” Each day, CBP performs a essential function in disrupting worldwide intercourse trafficking and figuring out each traffickers and victims earlier than they enter the inside of the US.

This 12 months, much like earlier years, CBP’s Air and Marine
Operations (AMA) is using numerous techniques to discourage human trafficking,
together with:

• Short-term flight restrictions round Raymond
  James Stadium (since victims are sometimes flown into the realm from different states or
  international locations).
• Patrolling the Tampa Riverwalk space and
  waterways.
• Enhanced maritime patrols alongside the shoreline.

Together with bodily operations, the businesses are working with the Tampa Bay space in an effort to coach the general public on intercourse trafficking, together with outlining the indicators of trafficking so as to be certain that “everybody who has come to Tampa Bay to benefit from the Tremendous Bowl has achieved so of their very own free will.”

Behind-the-scenes efforts like these by CBP, ICE, HSI and
numerous different legislation enforcement officers are essential to combating human
trafficking not solely within the U.S. however globally as properly. As immigration legal guidelines
turn out to be extra lax below the Biden administration, prison organizations and
traffickers will thrive, inflicting these human rights atrocities to skyrocket.

Imposing immigration legislation is not only about regulating who is available in and who leaves, however it’s also about stopping the atrocities that usually happen when we don’t perform these legal guidelines. An absence of immigration enforcement and open borders allow human and drug trafficking not solely at our borders, however inside the inside of our nation as properly. If the Biden administration continues to dismantle the front-line mechanisms that fight human trafficking on this nation, this horrific enterprise will probably be primed to turn out to be larger than ever in the US.