The cheerleaders for mass immigration like to view illegal migration through rose-colored glasses: as a heroic and romantic march of the impoverished peoples of the Global South towards a “better life.” However, this ostensible “happy ending” story obscures the many tragedies and pathologies that accompany mass illegal migration throughout the world. Sex trafficking is, sadly, at the top of this list. The anti-borders crowd prefers to either look the other way or to pretend that completely open borders would magically solve all problems, including sex trafficking. But the cold hard truth is that mass illegal migration in various ways enables, fuels, or encourages sex trafficking and prostitution while lining the pockets of vicious criminals.
There are many examples of this dark underbelly of illegal migration. In July, Honduran illegal alien Jose Carcamo was arrested in Texas for holding a Chinese sex trafficking victim hostage. Carcamo (whose removal order was terminated in 2024 under the Biden administration) held the victim hostage for five days without food or water, beat and sexually assaulted her, and, when she managed to escape his house, viciously dragged her back into the residence.
Sadly, the threat of sex trafficking – along with rape and other forms of sexual violence – so often accompanies the migrants from the moment they begin their long and dangerous journey in faraway lands to the moment they cross illegally into the U.S. and continues all the way to their final destinations throughout this country.
In South America, the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) became infamous in large part for ruthlessly muscling in on the prostitution racket in such places as Lima, Peru. According to a 2023 State Department report, TdA and its rivals “exploit Venezuelan migrants and internally displaced Colombians in sex trafficking and take advantage of economic vulnerabilities and subject them to debt bondage.”
As migrants from Venezuela and other South American nations – and elsewhere – traversed the jungle in Panama’s Darien Gap, the constant threat of sex trafficking and rape hovered over them, especially the women and children. Thanks to the Trump administration’s posture of deterrence, Darien Gap crossings have fallen 99.98 percent to practically zero. However, as the short but destructive episode of open-borders policies from 2021-2024 shows, hard-earned border security gains can easily be undone by an irresponsible anti-borders administration, and the Darien Gap should serve as a cautionary tale.
As migrants move north, the danger in no way recedes, and if anything is magnified by the iron fist with which brutal Mexican cartels control their side of the border, their coffers overflowing with proceeds from sex, human, and drug trafficking. In November 2024, an anti-sex-trafficking activist revealed that his team had been following a group of migrants all the way from the Darien Gap to the U.S.-Mexico border. They found a logbook that had been thrown away by the group’s organizers and coyotes. It was, the activist stated, “for all intents and purposes a slave ledger,” replete with the names of migrants, including their children, and monetary amounts assigned to each illegal alien being smuggled by ruthless criminal traffickers. Some migrants are undoubtedly forced to work in the sex trade to pay off debts to such smugglers.
When they reach their final destinations in the U.S., some illegal aliens turn to prostitution or are outright forced into it, while others serve as pimps, enforcers, or drivers. The severity of the problem is underscored by such cases as a large New-York-City-based nationwide ring (indicted in 2023) sexually trafficking Chinese women. According to the Department of Justice, “several” defendants “zip-tied the victims’ hands, stuffed or covered their mouths to silence them, and then viciously beat them with hammers, wrenches, baseball bats, rolling pins and other blunt objects, leaving the victims bloody, terrified, and, in many cases, seriously injured.”
By pretending this pathology doesn’t exist and supporting unfettered mass migration, the anti-borders crowd claims to be “compassionate.” However, as Nobel-Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once pointed out, “[o]ne of the great mistakes is to judge policies … by their intentions rather than their results.” In practice, supposedly “compassionate” Biden policies resulted in more sex trafficking, while the allegedly “harsh” Trump policies have discouraged it. Thus, by attacking secure borders and immigration enforcement, anti-borders extremists help fuel sex trafficking and vicious criminals – something which most reasonable people would certainly describe as the opposite of “compassionate.”
Pawel Styrna is senior researcher at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a legal immigrant, and has a Ph.D. in history from American University in Washington, D.C.