The migrant surge is boosting the smuggling of children for forced labor and sexual exploitation, converting the border into a “huge market” for “child sex trafficking,” Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) said this week.
“Human trafficking, my friends, is slavery,” Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) pointed out as he briefed reporters Wednesday alongside Salazar and other Republicans.
He went on to note “30 percent of the women and girls coming through this [migration] process are going to be raped.”
“We can’t standby and let that happen. We have boys and girls as young as six or seven years old being pushed into sex trafficking,” he added.
Some parents put their child on the migration pathway to the U.S. southern border process with “false hope” who never hear from their child again because that child will die, Owens also said.
“President Biden should be ashamed of himself. Ashamed. This was preventable,” Owens pointed out, adding, “There are people suffering, going through misery because they were given false hope.”
