Border Safe Houses See Fewer Trafficking Victims amid Trump Immigration Crackdown

At her safe houses in northwest Mexico, Alma Tucker has seen first-hand the horrors of human trafficking — the teen girls forced to have sex with their smugglers, the victimized boys who suffer in silence, the young migrants made to serve as drug mules.

Tucker's nonprofit, the San Diego-based International Network of Hearts, provides shelter and care for young victims of human trafficking, particularly in Mexico's Baja California region. There was no shortage of victims amid the Biden administration's border chaos.

But things have slowed drastically in recent months, particularly after President Donald Trump resumed office in January. "The Invasion of our Country is OVER," Trump declared on his Truth Social platform in early March touting his early success at the border.

Amid Trump's border crackdown, illegal crossings have plummeted — U.S. Border Patrol agents reported just over 8,300 apprehensions of unlawful border crossers in February, fewer than 300 per day, the lowest number in decades. By comparison, Border Patrol agents stopped at least 130,000 illegal border crossers every February in 2022, 2023, and 2024, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

During the Biden administration, the 22 beds at Tucker's three safe houses were typically filled with young victims, including kids that traffickers used as props to get adults across the border. In addition to food and shelter, the children they serve receive health care, mental-health therapy, and religious instruction, if they want it, Tucker said.

Under Trump, she said, about half of their shelter beds are empty on a typical night.

"Definitely it is better to contain the borders, mainly because organized crime is using these people," Tucker told National Review. "That's my concern, that organized crime is using the need, the desperation of the people trying come for a better life to this country."

Andi Buerger, a sex-trafficking survivor and founder of Voices Against Trafficking, an anti-trafficking information hub, agreed that the slowdown at the border is a positive step.

Anything that legally "plugs the hole in the dam of human trafficking" is good, she said, adding that combatting human trafficking shouldn't be a partisan issue.

"Human trafficking isn't about right versus left, it's about right versus wrong," she said.

Opponents of Trump's border-control policies and deportation plans have called them "inhumane," "a cruel, extremist effort," and a "racist terror campaign." But border-security backers and some anti-trafficking activists say the president's policies are saving lives by deterring prospective border-crossers from making the dangerous journey north and getting into perilous financial arrangements with cartels, coyotes, and smugglers, which put them at heightened risk of becoming trafficking victims.

"Under the previous administration, we incentivized people to not only break our laws, but to put their lives in jeopardy," said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "Even if they got here in one piece, we put them in a situation where they could be easily exploited in terms of labor and sometimes in the form of being put into the sex trades. . . . All of these things were a result of those policies that they claimed were actually humanitarian. They were the exact antithesis of humanitarian."

Human trafficking is a widespread, worldwide crime that generates an estimated $150 billion in illicit profits every year, according to the U.S. Department of State. Victims of modern-day slavery are forced to work in a variety of fields, some seemingly on the up and up, such as construction, agriculture, and restaurant work; and others that operate more in the shadows, including escort services, illicit massages, and pornography.

Immigrants, especially those who come to the country illegally, are particularly vulnerable. In 2023, authorities in Merced County, Calif., found 60 suspected trafficking victims — including at least one child —forced to work in a black-market marijuana-processing facility to pay off their smuggling debts. Some experts suggest that a majority of women and unaccompanied children are assaulted during or after their trek to the U.S.

"Anytime you take a risk by paying someone to transport you, that you don't know, will make you more vulnerable to any criminal activity," Buerger said.

Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, has defended the administration's approach, saying it saves lives and protects human dignity. "So, when President Trump has illegal immigration down 90 percent, how many women aren't being sexually assaulted? How many children aren't dying crossing the river? How many women and children aren't sex trafficked in this country," Homan said in an interview last month with the Catholic News Agency.

The Trump administration has also increased the vetting of sponsors of teenage migrants to identify criminals, gang members, and pimps who may be aiming to force them into the sex trades or other criminal operations. In an interview with National Review last month, Homan said his team has launched "numerous investigations" into suspected traffickers.

"Traffickers better be looking over their shoulders," he said. "We're going to put them out of business."

But not all anti-trafficking groups agree that harsher border policies and stepped-up deportation efforts are a net positive.

During Trump's first term, the nonprofit Human Rights First argued that his aggressive immigration policies "could further hurt victims of trafficking by instilling fear that leaving their traffickers would guarantee deportation." Many traffickers, the nonprofit said, use threats of deportation to control their victims and to push them further into the shadows.

"If the U.S. government is serious about increasing prosecutions and eradicating human trafficking, both domestically and across the globe, it should avoid immigration practices that signal to victims that they should be fearful of law enforcement," the group argued.

Around the same time, a writer with the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard similarly argued that "these victims of a horrific crime are at a significant risk, not just from their traffickers but from something else that can cause significant harm: the fear of deportation."

The Petrie-Flom author did not respond to an interview request from National Review. Human Rights First also did not make anyone available to discuss Trump's policies.

Buerger said traffickers almost surely are making deportation threats. But she said concerns about the president's policies having a chilling effect on victims reporting crimes are likely overstated because it is just "one of many threats" traffickers use.

"They're already being controlled, they're already terrified of being turned into the police," Buerger said of trafficking victims. "I can give you story after story of kids we rescued, the 18, 19, 20-year-olds we rescued who told us they couldn't say anything . . . that had nothing to do with deportation."

"They've already been threatened with their life," she added. "They've probably been beaten. They may be a drug user by this time, depending on how long they've been here and the trafficking ring. They've already had to endure things that most people couldn't stomach if they knew about it."

Tucker said traffickers "are very creative" and will use whatever message is being sent by the U.S. government in their favor.

"They're always going to take in their advantage anything that happens," she said. "Like before, with Biden, the doors are open, anybody can come almost — they used that to lie to the people and say, 'Yeah, everybody can come.'"

Reverend Pat Murphy, director of the Casa Del Migrante, a 140-bed shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, said that historically some people who've come to his organization for aid have likely been victims of trafficking and kidnapping. "But right now it's not a big number, for sure, because people are not coming" to the border or to his shelter, he told National Review.

"Since Trump has come in, our numbers have gone way down. We only average about 60 people a night right now," he said, noting that in addition to the slowdown in traffic to the U.S. border, the Trump administration hasn't been deporting many people to Tijuana.

Murphy is critical of Trump's immigration policies because he believes many of the people who come to his shelter are escaping real poverty and violence. Rather than come to the U.S., he said, good people are "going to die a slow death" in their home countries.

"I think the solution isn't just closing the borders, but opening opportunities for people" in Central and South American nations, said Murphy, who is also opposed to Trump's plan for the largest mass-deportation in U.S. history.

"If he wants to get rid of criminals, that's fine. I agree with that," he said. "But they're not all criminals like he makes them out to be."

Tucker said she's taking a wait-and-see position on overall Trump's border strategy. But she agreed that many of the migrants who were trying to get to the U.S. during the Biden years were "very good people" who were "really running away from very difficult situations."

"My message is, we need to be more sensitive . . . to others and care for others, and more than ever be united to support people that need, and not to just criticize or judge," she said. "Not everybody is the same. Not everybody is bad people or criminals."

Staff writer Audrey Fahlberg contributed to this report.