An anti-sex trafficking activist who has raised the alarm about the smuggling and smuggling of women and children into the United States across the southern border says a purported victim registry shows the extent to which groups of smugglers are calculated with the victims of trafficking.
Jaco Booyens, a filmmaker and anti-trafficking activist, spoke to Fox News Digital about a document he says he found among a group of migrants, mostly women and children, that his team followed from Darien Gap, through Mexico and up to Mexico. United States where they were encountered by the border patrol in Texas.
As some men in the group fled, the logbook ended up being thrown away, he said, and recovered by his team.
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Migrants from Eagle Pass, Texas, walk toward shelters at Floyd Bennett Field in the Brooklyn borough of New York on February 3, 2024. A migrant camp has been set up at Floyd Bennett Field, a former military airport. (Charly TRIBALLEAU/AFP)
“It’s for all intents and purposes, it’s a slave registry,” he said.
He says the book is typical of smugglers and shows the names of children crossing the border, as well as the amount still owed.
“That’s how they work. The sum is about $8,500. And then whatever part they can pay. Now some families here pay $50,” he said, adding that they will then owe the rest at a high interest rate to the gangs.
He said the discovery showed the absence of a human element in the smugglers’ situation.
“It’s never been more brazen than when you read this and you translate it, it’s numbers on a page. There’s a complete lack of humanity in this document,” he said.
This split shows migrants at the southern border and Jaco Booyens (Fox News | Carlos Moreno/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“When you read a document and it has the names of children and their ages, and you start to see a monetary value next to them, you know, that’s a reality that we live in, but the public “American doesn’t understand the extent to which human lives are commodified,” he says.
Booyens stressed that the migrants who are brought in are not then abandoned by the cartels but are hunted down and will be forced to repay the money they owe, whether through prostitution or other forms of work. If they do not register, they or their family members in their home country could be at risk of violence.
“The traffickers know where they are. They have a registry on them and they check in. They check in like you do with a parole officer because they are afraid for the lives of their family back home and they pay a debt. They have a debt to pay, so the system is very organized from that point of view,” he said.
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“It’s just terrible to have a ledger with the names and say, ‘Hey, this guy has X number of kids on his book. And he’s going to collect them,'” he said.
Smuggling has increased with the crisis at the southern border. The Biden administration has targeted transnational organizations that bring in migrants, often working with Mexico to crack down on migrant smuggling. But critics said they encouraged the activity with “open borders” policies.
As for what can be done to stop smuggling, Booyens noted a “vicious” cycle of demand for children from Americans. But he added that US laws must also be respected to stop enticing migrants.
“We just have to start by letting the law be the law,” he said. “We have an immigration law, although it needs to be reformed. Yes, but we have a law, and the law has been abandoned.”
Booyens spoke just days before the presidential election, where border security and immigration reform were top issues for voters.
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Polls suggest that former President Donald Trump holds a significant lead over Vice President Kamala Harris on this issue, with the two candidates competing over who is best positioned to secure the border.
Emma Woodhead of Fox News contributed to this report.
