If You Want to Discuss Child-Trafficking, Look No Further Than Here At Home

Fictional tales with Latinophobic undertones like the Sound of Freedom movie undermine the truth about human trafficking in the United States

Map showing human trafficking by numbers of people. Credit: Creative Commons

There’s been a lot of talk about the Q-Anonesque “Sound of Freedom” movie. Whether factual or not, there has also been discussion about Tim Ballard, the man behind the movie being a phony. The truth is, the film itself is a fraud. A wholly fictional tale claiming to be based on a true story - however loosely - and duping people into believing it’s a real account. It’s not.

Not even close.

And yet, despite all of that, there’s a lack of focus on its most problematic narrative: that U.S.-related human smuggling is a Latin American problem. What the movie glosses over is more dangerous than any premise it intends to portray. When it comes to human exploitation, trafficking, and child sexual assault in the United States, the worst offenders are those with social power: educators, law enforcement, federal authorities, pastors, and people who are often close to their victims.

Human trafficking and sexual exploitation of minors are major issues worldwide. We’ve heard about human smuggling for decades throughout Asia and the Pacific, all over Europe, and in Northern Africa just as much as we’ve heard about it at our southern border. What we rarely hear about, however, are the networks and the culprits right here at home.

After the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, for example, U.S. citizens, many representing religious organizations, were caught trafficking children to the U.S. At the time, the Department of State was publicly cracking down on not just faith-based groups illegally taking Haitian children and trafficking them, but pedophiles as well.

This is why diminishing the issue like the Sound of Freedom does is inappropriate and quite frankly, dangerous. Most who have watched it now believe they have a thorough understanding of how trafficking works. And while the film provides a less-than-adequate entry-level idea of the severity of the problem, the intentional glossing over of facts is based on QAnon nonsense from the past several years. In other words, it’s a propaganda film and it scapegoats Latinos.

@motherboardviceSound of Freedom hit first place in the box office this week. The movie valorizes Tim Ballard and his group Operation Underground Railroad. Here’s a snapshot of the long history of dubious claims made by Ballard and his group about the work they do. #soundoffreedom #soundoffreedommovie #angelstudios #timballard #jimcaviezel #antitraffickingprograms #godschildrenarenotforsale #news #movie #movieclips #boxoffice #vice

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Sure, you see some white people involved in some of the activity in the movie but the smugglers are all Latino, afro-Latino, or Indigenous in appearance. A caricature based on more than a century of Ku Klux Klan-type anti-Latino propaganda. When it comes to movies, however, this isn’t new. Every white savior film ever made has a non-white strawman and in The Sound of Freedom, it’s the Latino immigrant.

This will likely be the next volley used to bombard undocumented immigrants already in the United States and those at the US-Mexico border. It will be used as a propaganda tool that it was meant to be in promoting white Christian male superiority - despite the truth about the status quo today and this country’s horrifying history as a product of colonization.

What it won’t be used for is to attack melanin-deficient perpetrators.

There is no doubt that human smuggling and trafficking are serious issues that need to be addressed and the attention the issue is getting is welcomed. But Q-Anon-level fantasies are dangerous and detract from the problem. Meanwhile, organizations like the one behind this film enrich a few and use much-needed funds - leaving little to address the problem more directly.

That’s the real shame in all of this.

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To get an idea of how pervasive the problem is in the United States, check out Violent Crimes Against Children news on the FBI’s website.

For resources and additional info click here.

If you or someone you know is a victim of human trafficking, contact the Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or visit their website here.

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Arturo is a writer, journalist, and publisher of The Antagonist Magazine and a regular contributor at Latino Rebels and Unicorn Riot. You can find him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.