South American Job Opportunities & Trafficking Connection

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William Wilberforce once said, Let it not be said I was silent when they needed me. This is Lantern Rescue. Oh, we've got quite a story for you today on Lantern Rescue.

We're going to actually go to South America. And so, Wren, it's quite a couple stories we got formed today, right? Yeah, we do. And if the listeners tuned in last week when you heard me and Ryan on the call talking about, you know, what these false job opportunities look like and some of the trafficking that can be involved in that, this is going to tie in really well with that and help give some understanding of it and make this real and actually show a couple of cases where this did happen. Yeah, and it's amazing to me how evil just plots all these crazy schemes and, boy, we really see that today, don't we?

We really do. And it's really unfortunate. You know, all these cases, all trafficking is horrible and it's unfortunate. But there's this different aspect to these false job opportunities and how people get trafficked through them because you got to think about it this way. You know, all types of trafficking are really terrible. But there's this particular aspect of this form of trafficking where someone's offered this false job opportunity.

It's just another level, right? So picture a time in your life where you were looking for a job or maybe you had lost your job and your savings was getting low and then this amazing job opportunity popped up and it just seems so perfect and it fits all the points and you start to feel really hopeful and that this job is going to change your life, it's going to change your family's life. You're going to have this amazing opportunity. Now imagine taking that job, getting to that job, and maybe it requires you to relocate or something like that. You take that job and you get there and it is completely not what you signed on for. You're being abused, you know, this opportunity you thought was going to provide for your family is actually taking you away from them.

There's no money going to your family. You're being abused and you're in a trafficking situation. It's that hope that you have for a better life, trying to improve yourself, trying to, you know, improve your situation, improve your family situation, and then it's just ripped out under these victims by these traffickers.

So, like I said, all parts of trafficking are devastating and horrible, but there's just a different element to this one. And, you know, we're going to talk about a couple cases today. Yeah, so jump right in and tell us about the first one.

Yeah, absolutely. So, this happened a little bit ago, just pretty recently, but, you know, not in the last week, but we had our team down in Ecuador. They got a tip about two victims. Both 17-year-olds, one Ecuadorian and one Venezuelan, that had been enticed across the border into Peru by this false job opportunity. So, they had been enticed in online. This person online was telling them that they were going to have this amazing job opportunity in Peru. They should travel down there and restart this great life. They're going to be working in a restaurant.

They're going to, you know, be serving in a tourist cafe, and they're going to make a ton of money, right? So, they get down there and very quickly realize that this is not what it claims to be. So, as part of that, the team was tipped off, and they started to work and coordinate with the prosecutor's office there in Ecuador to identify these victims and the trafficker because they had very limited information at that point. They just knew that they had crossed the border and this situation was happening over there. So, they're trying to figure out what's going on. And in that investigation, it's revealed to be a much larger scene where people are part of kind of a trafficking ring that have people sitting in Peru that are putting these online advertisements out and really grooming and trying to build trust in these victims and enticing them across the border. Now, these are 17-year-old girls, very young, thinking that they have this great opportunity in Peru. So, these girls are traveling together.

They're building a relationship with each other. And, you know, some of us as teenagers probably thought, like, oh, man, when we're 18, we're going to get a job down at the beach and we're going to work in this juice bar. And, like, you know, maybe you've kind of fantasized about having a fun time with your friends, traveling and working with them, right?

I think a lot of us have done that in our lives. So, these girls are traveling and they're building a friendship, they're bonding, thinking that they're going to this opportunity, thinking that they're going to start a new life in Peru and they're going to have this great adventure and this job and all this just to find out that none of it's true. It's all fake and they were going to be in sex trafficking. So, the girls were recovered.

Yeah, yeah, fortunately. And they've been placed in a safe house. Now, the safe house is back in Ecuador. So, we have a Venezuelan victim and she's still in Ecuador for right now and we'll kind of see what the situation is moving forward and if she's able to be taken back to her family or what the safest, you know, future is for her that might be staying in Ecuador.

We'll kind of see what that looks like. And the team was able to coordinate with the Peruvian government and have that trafficker arrested on the Peruvian side as well. So, really unfortunate how it fell out, but the girls were able to be recovered and they are, you know, they're doing a lot better now, they're thriving.

Ravi, I know you got to see a picture of them. They look, you know, so happy. They're doing really well now, but it's just devastating that they thought they had this opportunity. And then now, thinking about their future, the next time they get a job offer, how are they going to feel about it? It really, the impact of this just really continues to ripple through victims' lives throughout the recovery process. And it seems harder for some people to understand rather than like a kidnapping into sex trafficking or something sensationalized. To some people, this might, oh, you just were tricked by a job opportunity. But imagine how much that would shape your life going forward at such a young age, trying to trust the next job opportunity, trying to build your life up.

It's just getting compiled, and it's just a lot. Yeah, especially in an area of poverty, right? And it's difficult to stay in that area and find a job. And so, you know, it's catch-22 on all sorts of levels. However, you know, clearly, every single arrest and investigation of whatever teaches you, you know, I guess the good guys, more and more what to look for in these situations and also to communicate with the people in Ecuador, et cetera, what to look out for. Yeah, and there's a lot of training that can be happening around this, you know, ensuring that these recruitment agencies or these jobs, that they're vetted. And again, to kind of circle back to personal things that people experience, like sometimes when you're, you know, maybe when you were younger on AOL chat rooms, you're talking to someone and you don't really want to tell your parents the details, because, you know, it's a little sketchy. And if they, you tell them, then they're going to kind of call it out and you want to believe that that's real. It's kind of similar with these job opportunities, right? So while they could have, and they may have even, talked to family and friends about it and expressed, you know, this is what they say it's going to be, this, that, and the third, if someone were to tell them, oh, that seems too good to be true, you kind of double down. You're kind of like, well, no, I think it's right. I'm, you know, you don't want to feel inadequate.

Like you set yourself up, right? So it's kind of a catch-22 and it's really hard in that sense because they want to be independent. They want to have a better life. And like you said, there's a lot of resource scarcity. There's a lot of poverty in these areas. So, you know, their options are take this job that may or may not work out or be here with no job. So it's really, yeah, it's a catch-22. It's really hard for them. Yeah, it really is. And I really do wish our listeners could see the pictures because, you know, it really puts a face on trafficking and, you know, these sweet, innocent young girls, right? That, like you said, their hopes were to start a new life and the next thing you know, they're caught up in something so dark and horrible and abuse and it's just, it's, you know, horrible. But by the same token, I just praise God that he's raising up people around the world to, you know, combat this kind of thing and obviously making you guys aware. It's fascinating to me that somehow word got to you in order to investigate it when they were moving. I'm curious how that happened. Yeah, so we can't really disclose that, but yeah, I mean, it's just, and it kind of goes to show how good our team is doing down there.

And, you know, all glory goes to the team on this. The locals that did this and then were able to investigate this and took it seriously, right? They didn't just take in this tip of, hey, two 17-year-olds, which is almost an adult, right? So almost 18, hey, two 17-year-olds might've taken this sketchy job over in Peru. Well, that's another country, right?

That's a bit of trouble. So the team easily could have ignored this. They could have written it off.

They could have not taken it seriously, but they didn't. They heard about this and they knew this was wrong and they investigated and they uncovered something that was significant and these girls that needed help, they needed someone to come for them. So, you know, it's so amazing that the team was able to get to these girls, but how many more are gone than no one's looking for? Yeah, that's a scary thought, but it also, you know, to me, when you're going, you know, cross country like that, in other words, from one country to another country, there must have been just, you know, God must have created a tremendous amount of grace or favor, you know, for the Ecuadorian community to reach for the Peruvian community, right?

Those people always don't work together so well. Right, having the countries working together and, you know, what a terrible fear of a parent that your kid is missing and not just missing within your own country. They've made it across into another country.

Like, how helpless would you feel in those situations? So it's really amazing what has come out of this and that the teams were able to work together and I think it really does go to show how much people are working and how much attention is being paid to these trafficking crimes and that the needle is moving in a positive direction. And while there are tons of victims that still need help and are out there, there are teams around the world that care so much and they're willing to go to the literal ends of the earth to get these victims back. Right, and I think that, you know, as you're listening, you're thinking, you know, wow, what a neat, I know I'm thinking it, what a neat opportunity to pray for favor, you know, from country to country and favor that God would raise a red flag for someone. And again, we have this wonderful app where you can just text pray to 336-234-3302 to join prayers, you know, the lanterns prayer community.

Again, it's pretty simple, text the word pray to 336-234-3302 and again, you've got an opportunity to take part in that or you can join liberators, right? And if God's putting on your heart to help fund this, you know, because obviously these teams, you know, a lot of travel's involved and there's a whole lot going on with that and again, if you wanna join the liberator group and give monthly, right, that you can find that at lanternrescue.org slash liberator. And so, you know, we've got a whole lot more and another story coming at you and this whole idea of, you know, what, how is this, you know, what starts out as a work opportunity turns into a horrible nightmare for people and we'll be right back with a whole lot more Lantern Rescue. Lantern Rescue is a USA based organization that conducts international rescue operations for people suffering from human trafficking. Lantern specializes in sending former US special operation, law enforcement and intelligence personnel to partner with host nations and assist them in creating specialized units to combat ongoing security problems, such as genocide, terrorism and human trafficking.

As a nonprofit charity, they offer services free of charge to their host nations. Human trafficking has grown into the second largest criminal activity in the world, reaching an estimated $150 billion in annual activity. Lantern Rescue has developed rapidly to combat trafficking. Lantern operates through a trained international network in order to rescue women and children from sex and labor slavery and facilitates holistic aftercare services.

They're gearing up for operations right now and you can go to lanternrescue.org to see how you can support them financially. Welcome back to Lantern Rescue and today we're talking about, wow, these exploitation of work opportunities, specifically in Ecuador and South America this week and kind of how these things unfold that we could all learn more about how these, you know, how evil is working these days and how to combat it and those kinds of things. And so, Wren, we got another story.

Yeah, we do. And in our last story, we talked about how people were enticed out of Ecuador. This time they're being enticed into Ecuador with a false job opportunity. Wow.

Yeah, yeah. So in this case, there was two female victims again. These girls were 15 and 16 and they were Colombians. So they had been brought over into Ecuador and enticed in by a 40-year-old woman, actually. So their trafficker in this situation was female.

And I think it's important to highlight that because, you know, this job opportunity, they were enticed over by a false job opportunity, right? And they weren't 100% sure what they would be doing, but they knew, at least they thought, what they were told by their trafficker was that if they came to Ecuador, they were gonna have a great job. They were gonna be able to send money back home, support their families. And these young girls, they desperately wanted to do that.

Their situation in Colombia wasn't good. They were in poverty, their families were in poverty, and they thought that this was their opportunity to make a better life for their family. And like we talked about in last week's episode, some of these opportunities for jobs in other countries are real, and they had probably seen family members go to other countries, get a good job, and send money home.

And you probably know people in your personal life that are from another country that have moved to America and gotten a great job. And so this is a real thing. This isn't one of those things where the Nigerian prince email scam where it's 100% of the time, we know it's a scam, right? This is, so, which also, don't click on those emails. But this is not one of those things where it's like, oh, obviously you should have known better.

Well, you really couldn't have. They thought they were doing something good. So they get enticed in, this is through social media. They meet someone who's a woman, right? So they're going to naturally trust, a woman more, and we see that a lot. We see a lot of that gender-based trust, right?

So a lot of people, and even sometimes I'm guilty of this, you naturally trust women with children more, or you naturally trust women in some situations more than you would trust a male. And they had that situation here as well. So they get enticed in by this female, this 40-year-old woman who tells them if they come to Ecuador they're going to have this great job. Well, that's not what happened. They got into Ecuador and they were very quickly put into sex trafficking.

They were offered up online. They were deceived. They were into a bit of forced begging when they weren't being used as a sex trafficking victim.

So, you know, it's just so tragic to hear about this. Fortunately, the girls have been rescued. They are no longer in that situation. They were transferred to a safe home. And we spent a little bit of time processing and making sure that they were okay physically and as okay mentally as they could be. And their homes back in Colombia were insured to be safe places and they have gone back to Colombia now and they're safely back with their families. But, you know, cases like this are so sad because even when you encounter the victims, they're about to go back to their home country with nothing.

You know, they were tricked. They've been in Ecuador for a while and they went telling everyone and probably making somewhat of a big deal about, I mean, if I was moving to another country for a job, I'd probably make a big deal out of it. You know, hey, I'm going to this country. It's going to be great kind of talking it up, right?

Sure. And then you get home, yeah. And you get home and you kind of have to, you know, tell everyone like, hey, I was deceived, right?

I'm coming home with nothing. This wasn't real. And while that is in some ways maybe helpful to prevent victimization of other people in their communities and their families, how bad does that feel for the victim? Oh, and I, you know, again, going back to the story for a minute, you know, I just always think it's amazing how God comes to the rescue, you know, and the ones we do know about, that obviously some word got to somebody, you know, clearly their families had to be going nuts because they heard nothing, right, after they went to Ecuador?

Pretty much, yeah. So, but, you know, they kind of had a little bit of communication, but it would have been controlled by the trafficker, right? Like they wouldn't have been able to call immediately and say, you know, mayday, mayday, this is wrong. So it's just, it's devastating, you know, to find out stuff like this and for families to find out, because the families are contacted to ensure that they're okay. Can you imagine, you know, your kid gets, goes on a mission trip or something to another country and you get a phone call and not saying like, hey, you know, we got to do this awesome thing today, but hey, this is the police. We have your daughter. She was being sex trafficked.

We need to verify that you're a safe home for her to go home to. Yeah, it's just, it's really unthinkable, especially in this situation. So again, I know you may not be able to tell me, but I'm still gonna ask you. Like, who knew what in order to go, oh, this is, this, or, you know, how did they find them when they didn't even necessarily know they were missing? Yeah, so, and this is, right? So the first case we talked about, they're missing from Ecuador, right? They weren't missing and they went to another country.

This case, they are missing essentially from Columbia, but they're not really missing, right? Like they went on a job opportunity. That's where their families think they are. So they're unregistered people in Ecuador. So the government isn't really tracking that they're there.

They're not really tracking. So in this case, there was another tip, right? So someone had noticed these girls within the country and noticed that something was wrong and a tip was sent in and that's what sparked the investigation and that's really, in cases like this and really a lot of trafficking cases and just cases in general, that humanity and other people being able to see someone and just feeling something is wrong, something is off, this is out of place and knowing to report that in, it could save a life and it could save these girls. In this case, it did, it saved these girls. So knowing that you can make a tip, which you absolutely can here in the United States, you are able to call the National Human Trafficking hotline, 888-3737-888.

Absolutely can do that. You can call 911, you can call local authorities and we would much rather, and I at least speak for myself in this and Lantern Rescue, we would rather triage a hundred tips to end up not being anything than miss one where someone was being trafficked. So if you do feel some kind of way and you think you see a situation where someone might be exploited, they might be trafficked, something like that, just send in a tip. If you're wrong, that's okay. No harm, no foul. No one's gonna come after you.

But if you were right and you didn't put the tip in, that's another day of exploitation that someone's suffering because they might not have had to. Yeah, give that number out one more time. It's 888-3737-888.

888-3737-888. That's right. That's easy to remember on purpose, I would imagine. It is. Yeah, yeah.

So it's a pretty good one. And again, you can always call 911 as well. If it's in your local area and you see something happening right in front of you, I would encourage you to call 911. So yeah, there's definitely ways to report that. And in this situation, now this, the National Human Trafficking Outline does for America.

So there's different ways to report it over in Ecuador. And that's how this was reported. And these victims were able to be rescued because of that. Yeah, you know, I was studying the book of Esther today and I came across this that just applies to this, is the word Esther itself means God hidden in plain sight. And so when I think about these victims, they're always hidden right in plain sight, right?

Obviously they're out there, but we just can't see it. But God obviously, in this case, put it on these people's heart, gave them the resources to know the number. And so as you're listening, even today, God may be arming you to look for and say, hey, what are those girls doing?

That just doesn't look right. That situation is something, right? And as Wren said, they'd rather triage 100 to get that one, because that one might be two, might even be a whole bunch of girls that are being held against their will, or guys for that matter, in horrible situations, right? Right, and you know, speaking about Esther, one of the most well-known verses in that, if you were born for a time such as this, you know, maybe if you're seeing a situation that you think is trafficking, maybe that's exactly where God wanted you that day.

It was right there. To see that and to call someone and to, and even if you end up not being right, well, now you're thinking about trafficking and now you're looking around and you're seeing the world around you and not just, you know, living with your head down and just internally focused. You're now externally focused and you're paying attention to the world around you, because that's really how we're gonna get to the most victims, is that everyone, all the citizens of the world, need to be paying attention to this.

And you're exactly where you're supposed to be at that moment. Yeah, that's well said, exactly. And so in this particular case, we never discussed were the traffickers brought to justice and all that?

They were, yeah. Yep, and I will, you know, Robby, I will share a picture of you. No, I'm not gonna share a picture of you, Robby.

Sorry. I'll share a picture of this trafficker with you. Oh, wow. So, yeah, yeah. So this was, again, this was a woman in this case that trafficked these girls.

Holy moly. Like you would, right? You would never guess. No, no, you know, these are, you know, you think this is gonna be someone who's gonna take care of you. Maybe, and I don't know this for sure, but maybe she was even telling them, oh, you know, I did this.

This is what I did when I was younger and it worked out so well. I don't know that. But when you have those identifiable similarities between people, the traffickers have these identifiable similarities with their victims.

They're able to optimize on that, right? So maybe she was saying that she was once a young girl in poverty and looking for an opportunity and this is what she did. And they'll try to build their trust. And I don't know if that's what she was saying, right? But this is stuff we see in cases where they try to build their trust by having these similarities. Like, oh, I did that too. You know, you wanna connect with them on that level. So this trafficker likely was saying stuff like that.

She was likely trying to build their trust and oh, you can, you know, you can come here and it's safe and I'm a woman and stuff like that. Yeah, it's absolutely, again, just horrible to even think about. But again, I'm so grateful for your listening today and we wanna remind you that, you know, clearly prayer is a gigantic aspect of what's going on in this. Is, you know, God's gonna make us all aware so we can see what's right in front of our faces. And again, we're gonna tell you that if you text pray to 336-234-3302, that's pray, you text it to 336-234-3302 and you can join the prayer team for us at Land and Rescue or as we've talked about many times, if you just go to landandrescue.org, you can look in for the liberator or you can even put backslash liberator and you can join if God's put it on your heart to give financially monthly. You know, it's so much easier to budget when you know that the money's coming in, you know, down the road but, you know, one-time gifts are wonderful if that's what God puts on your heart but if it makes it something that we know that you're gonna be doing regularly, then it helps us schedule other projects that God's put on Landon's heart in order to move forward and along those lines, have you got some other projects there in South America, Wren? Yeah, I mean, we're hoping to expand in the next year or two. We're hoping to get to some other countries in South America. You know, the need is so great everywhere in the world, right, and we have to focus in some places because there's not enough of us to go around yet but yeah, so we're definitely working on stuff and, you know, we're hoping that we can get to one more after one more victim and that's really what it's all about is just one victim. We would do all of this just to save one person, to get one person out of trafficking.

So constantly just thinking about one, it's not about the vast number, it's about each individual life. Right and, you know, again, it's the whole idea that I've thought about Landon Rescue from the beginning is, you know, once you have this information, God has armed you just as Wren said for such a time as this and so be sure and as you listen to this, think about it. Who could I share this podcast with? Who can I share this broadcast with? You know, I know it comes on every Saturday and this is the time and the station, tell your friends. Again, help get the word out because God obviously is using all of us as influencers in so many different ways as he's doing that in Ecuador and Peru as we'd even talked about in Columbia today and so Wren, great show. Thank you so much for what God's doing for you guys. Thank you.