Profiling Sex Trafficking: Illegal Immigrants at Risk
Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, Ph.D.

Slavery is not dead. This wretched practice is alive and well around the entire world. In fact, there are around 2 million sex slaves today. I conducted a study of illegal immigrants in the U.S. who commit sex crimes. In the process, I discovered that there are many illegal immigrants who are the victims of sex crimes. Being illegal immigrants, many times, they remain silent – and with silence, bad things prosper.

Women and girls are trafficked from many countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Mexico is the number one source for young female sex slaves in North America. Tlaxcala, in Central Mexico serves as a hotbed for slave traders. Young women and girls are abducted, tricked, and sometimes sold by poor families into a caged life. Highly prized are 12-year-old girls sneaking across the border into the United States. The girls are grabbed by Los Lenones, aka pimps, and dragged to unfamiliar areas where they are “broken in.â€