As a former United States special agent, Ballard has worked in more than 20 countries, investigating and dismantling human trafficking networks.
Ballard began his career on the Mexican border, investigating cases of child trafficking. “There are thousands of children being sold for sex, labor and even for the sale of organs. I have worked on many cases of all this, but I focus a lot on Latin America because I speak Spanish and understand the culture,” said Ballard.
In the conversation, Ballard noted that child trafficking “continues to be a difficult problem” to solve, especially in Latin American countries.
“There is a lot of work. And that is why we are here, to fight, because it is very sad. This must be a constant job and we must talk about it all the time and make agreements with the governments so that the work is better and continue the work of rescuing these children,” he said.
According to figures from the Trafficking in Persons report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in 2022 for the first time “the number of victims of this crime detected worldwide decreased”, but they warned that there is no total location of victims.
Ballard stressed that, despite the harsh reality, the challenges for countries are increasing due to new technologies, which are used by human trafficking mafias for this purpose.
“Parents, my age or older or younger, when we were kids, we didn’t have social media, we didn’t have the internet, so I wasn’t aware of how this could be such a big threat. They don’t understand it. To protect children, we have to teach parents about the dangers that exist on social media,” she said.
“Often families don’t know. For example, there was a case here in Colombia, where parents thought their children were going to a modeling school and went for several hours, but the intention was to sell them for sex to clients,” she added.
She also stressed that traffickers do not have a fixed profile. “They look like any other person,” she said. “We need to work on understanding their tactics, to infiltrate and rescue children. Human trafficking is a highly lucrative industry, and it is essential to understand how they operate in order to combat it effectively,” she explained.
In that sense, in a recent interview for the Voice of AmericaSuamhirs Piraino-Guzman, a graduate in behavioral psychology, United Nations Special Rapporteur and former member of the Federal Advisory Council on Trafficking in Persons, explained that there are no adequate laws and policies in the region to support victims of trafficking and bring traffickers to justice.
“Many of the countries in Latin America do not have good laws, they do not have good policies, they do not have effective ways to protect victims of human trafficking,” he said.
Despite the difficulties and constant pressure involved in eradicating these criminal organizations, Ballard points to “joint” work in the fight against this scourge.
“I believe that more than 100 million people have seen Sounds of Freedom, but if there is no action afterwards, then it will remain just a movie. We want to put into action what everyone saw in the movie. We are starting conferences in Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, throughout Latin America,” he concluded.
Watch the full interview by clicking here.
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