AMAC Exclusive – By Neil Banerji
Human trafficking has become one of the fastest-growing criminal industries in America thanks to President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats’ open borders policies, prompting Republican-led states to take action to address the crisis.
In the most recent example, the Tennessee state legislature passed a bill during a special session late last month which mandates that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) release an annual report on the state’s human trafficking crimes and trends. TBI has previously said that human trafficking is the second-fastest growing criminal industry in the Volunteer State, and the law enforcement organization had already received nearly 200 referrals of human trafficking in 2023 by early last month.
Tennessee’s effort to better track the crime reflects how bad the situation has become amid a surge in illegal border crossings since Biden took office. In 2022, reported human trafficking cases spiked 84 percent nationwide from 2021, and are set to soar higher still this year.
As human trafficking numbers have increased, Tennessee and other red states have made criminal penalties more severe. But without the ability to address the problem directly at the border, those efforts have been marginally effective at best.
In an exclusive interview with AMAC Newsline, Aaron Gulbransen, the Executive Director of TN Faith and Freedom Coalition, praised the Tennessee legislature’s effort as a promising sign.
“This bill is the first step in a very lengthy war,” he said. “It’s the kickstart of a swathe of bills that are intended to cut the heart out of human trafficking in the state of Tennessee.”
As Gulbransen explained, “Because of the murky nature of human trafficking, better tracking data helps law enforcement identify blind spots. Any person who’s a fan of good government understands that you need to hold government accountable.”
One of the most tragic aspects of human trafficking in the U.S. is that many of the victims are children who often experience physical and sexual abuse. “Here in Tennessee, a child is bought or sold for human trafficking every two minutes,” Gulbransen said. “Human trafficking is amongst us. It is in our communities. It occurs very often less than one from mile from where we live, and very near to where our children sleep and play. Most of the cases are Tennesseans who are being trafficked by drug-addicted family members.”
According to Gulbransen, blue cities like Nashville and Memphis have witnessed the largest spike in human trafficking, and radical leftist prosecutors in those cities seem to be the most obvious culprits aside from the traffickers themselves.
“What you have is George-Soros Funded DAs, who at the very least refuse to prosecute child and human traffickers,” he said. This creates a “ripple effect that directly impacts law enforcement officers on the street’s ability to do their job. They don’t have the resources they need to do their jobs. And they’re certainly not going to risk being murdered by gangs and other organizations when they know that the people they go after aren’t going to be prosecuted anyway.”
The result is a vicious cycle where traffickers are incentivized to continue operating in ever-more brazen ways while law enforcement is sidelined by activist-minded prosecutors who put criminals ahead of victims.
The current situation is a drastic reversal from what was seen under former President Donald Trump. “The Trump Administration understood the human trafficking problem,” Gulbransen said. “They understood it in the United States and at the border. As soon as Biden took office, they deemphasized or scratched everything that Trump was doing.”
The numbers support Gulbransen’s assertion. Human trafficking in the Americas has expanded from a $500 million industry in 2018 to an estimated $13 billion industry today. The State Department now estimates that between as many as 17,500 people are victims of human trafficking within the U.S. every year, 72 percent of whom are immigrants.
That’s hardly the “fair, orderly, and humane” immigration system Joe Biden has promised. Instead, it seems the traffickers and criminals are the only ones who are thriving under Democrat rule.
For red states who have been demanding the federal government do more to address human trafficking as well as a host of other problems as a result of the chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border, Tennessee’s efforts could become a blueprint for change. While it’s clear by now that Biden isn’t interested in responding to the direct pleas of the people most affected by his border policies, perhaps hard data will force some accountability.
Even if that’s not the case, further exposing the full scale of Biden’s failures could go a long way toward convincing voters that it’s time for a change in 2024.
Neil Banerji is a proud Las Vegas resident and former student at the University of Oxford. In his spare time, he enjoys reading Winston Churchill and Edmund Burke.
