Recovery & Extraction- South America

This is Robbie Dilmore from The Christian Car Guy and Kingdom Pursuit, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build a kingdom. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds.

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William Wilberforce once said, Let it not be said I was silent when they needed me. This is Lantern Rescue. Welcome to Lantern Rescue today, and I am always amazed at what God provides us with in opportunities of the needy people that are crying out for help, especially in human trafficking this week. We've got Camp and Victor with us, and they've had some updates that they want to share from another part of the world that we don't talk about all that often. But Camp, tell us what's going on.

Hey, Robbie. Just like to update all of our listeners and supporters of our progress we have in South America. We have really opened up a program down there working with a counter human trafficking unit for the police in one of the countries in South America. And we started probably around the first of the year, but it has just really taken off. We've gotten some really good cases, some good rescues, arrests and training and more to come.

Wow. And we also have Victor with us today. So Victor, tell us what you're seeing. Hey, thank you for having me, Robbie. We just like to add to our campsite that we are had a lot of good movement down in South America. Just in July and June, we've had six operations, a couple, let me see, we have five rescues in June, and we had five rescues in July as well. So it's just with partnership with our local authorities down there and through lantern rescue, we've been able to do some pretty good work on a couple different fronts, human trafficking and migrant trafficking as well. Wow, that's exciting.

I mean, those results, again, it just seems like God has really, really blessed lantern with these opportunities. And so camp, you have those rescues and arrests. Can you kind of take us into the details of some of those cases or what you can disclose?

Yeah. So in the last couple months, like Victor said, we've had 10 rescues. Most of them have been minors, eight arrests, those have mostly been the smuggling aspect of human trafficking, as well as some of the sex trafficking as well as minors. I think so far since May, I believe we've seen 295 people, just shy of 300 people in South America alone on awareness and other police trainings in that country just since May. We've been pretty busy. Some of the cases that we've dealt with, some of them are pretty sad.

Some involve a 13 year old girl who was being trafficked for sex and was luckily rescued before she was taken to her next location, which was going to be at a prison where she was going to be forced to, you know, have sexual encounters with prisoners at a facility there. So that was one that we're really, really proud of that we intervened in and got her out of that situation before it got much, much worse. Wow.

That's, yeah, it almost takes your breath to think about how horrible that is. And it's amazing that at the same time, these countries that are partnering with you guys, you're getting a chance to do additional training and those kinds of things as well, right? Yeah. So we get to do training in all sorts of, a lot of it in investigations, tactical training with the police, as well as going out and doing prevention, awareness to schools, orphanages, and aftercare facilities, which we go into a lot and help with them as well. But yeah, it's really growing down there. It's really, really been going well. We hope that it can expand and reach more people. So Victor, you know, share with our listeners a little bit about your involvement with those rescues. So with those, I've been a Spanish speaking volunteer for the organization. I get to work closely with a lot of the individuals there, our contacts in these countries. So it just communicating back and forth, asking what their needs, how can we support just breaking down the operation itself, getting a list of what's going on, what moving parts, what city they're working in. And it just, it's the communication part. I'm also a volunteer on our mobile advisory team. So whenever we go out and do more tactical training, I assist with those as well.

Majority of it is translating and communication with a lot of these Latin countries. Wow. And so when some of those come in, what happens from your standpoint, Victor, what happens to your heart when you hear something like this poor girl? You know, I can't even imagine. My first emotion that I go through is anger. God put us on this earth to protect everybody, to make sure everybody is living the best life possible in regards to God himself and what can be assigned to us.

And when we have individuals who disregard and treat other humans as nothing more than a transactional product, it does bring anger. But through prayer and just calming myself, it's sadness at that point. It's how can we, what can we do to help? How can I help? What gift has God given me that allows me to help Lansing rescue and help these individuals, help these victims to get them out of these situations.

So biggest one is my ability to speak Spanish, being able to go into Latin countries and work with the local authorities, the police, whomever it may be, and just work through the process of getting to know them, building a relationship, trust, and then understanding that we're there to help, that we're there to assist us in whatever capacity we can. And then once they're rescued, it just brings happiness. At times, it brings tears to know that we, as God's stewards of this earth, we're able to help these individuals, these kids, these children to get out of a life that was not proclaimed for them.

Right. There are so many moving parts in all this. As I was thinking about it at camp, you know, as he gets those calls, then all of a sudden he begins to pray, the team begins to pray, obviously that, you know, for the child and then how's, you know, how's a child that's rescued, where are they going to be placed, and what are the next steps in their life? And then there's the arrest and that person who is the perpetrator that, you know, prayer goes on for that. And how many people again did you say were arrested, Cam? Since May, we've had eight arrests in that country. So when you really think about what God's done there is, you know, who knows how many hundreds of those eight people would have already enslaved just in the few months since you've gotten them off the streets, right? Yeah. Yeah.

There's no telling. It is a blessing to have them off the streets and in custody. And you mentioned it a while ago, yeah, and Victor brought it up, too. One of the first feelings is anger, right? And I think that's probably what all of us in this field feel when we first interact with someone like this. But, you know, like you said, the prayer goes on, like you have to pray for these people, too, for change and, you know, hopefully they turn their life around and, you know, not be let out in 10, 20 years and continue that cycle of life that they're, you know, they're getting rehabilitated. But yeah, that is a very hard part to get over the anger to know, just like these eight people, how many people they have negatively affected in their life with what they do. So yeah, it's a great feeling for us.

It's a great accomplishment for that country and the police there to get these eight people off the streets. Yeah, and you know, I don't know if you've seen The Sound of Freedom, that movie, that I'm sure a lot of our listeners have seen it. And at the end, have you seen it, Camp?

I have not, no. Well, you ought to. I mean, it's certainly the line of work you guys are in. But at the end of it, Jim Caviezel, he has a special message and he talks about, you know, that he's not the hero of the movie or the rescuer that he portrays in the movie is not the hero of the movie. He said, but the two heroes of the movie are the two children that certainly helped each other get out of the human trafficking situation that they were in. And not to disagree with it in total respect to what he was saying, but Jesus is the hero of the whole deal, right? And our battle is not against flesh and blood, it's against spiritual forces in high places who obviously are directing the perpetrators who are so weak-minded that they've been trapped into this whole thing. But, you know, all that seems to be a symptom of the real problem that everybody in this equation needs Jesus, right?

Absolutely, yeah. And it is true that one of the heroes is sometimes the victim. Like we, on one of our previous shows, we talked about a victim from the Caribbean who went back to South America and that's, you know, that's what she wants to devote part of her life to now is helping those who are also afflicted by the same issues that she went through. So it is good to see people come out of the darkness and want to pull other people with them. Yeah, it's really second Corinthians chapter one coming to life, right? As God comforted her, now she's going to comfort others, you know, gave her real purpose. You know, that's absolutely a beautiful picture of watching the Bible come to life, you know?

It really is amazing. Well, tell me your thoughts, Victor, in this discussion. Well, yes. Ultimately, God is the hero in everything that we do. You know, we wake up in the morning because of God.

Our decisions should be based on the Bible, on what God says to us. And him sending everybody out that he has sent out in this field, camp, myself, the other volunteers. We aren't heroes. We're just doing as we are told.

And as we, as long as we do that, as long as we follow the guidelines of God has placed before us, and we do it with integrity, we do it with love and with care. All these young children are heroes as well. You know, in my trip, my first trip down to this specific country down in Latin America, we were blessed with the opportunity to visit with some of our survivors. And a lot of them, you know, we asked them what their future goals are, what they wanted to be in life.

And we had anywhere from prosecutors to doctors, lawyers, to, we had some that wanted to be actresses, young individuals who have goals in their lives. And because of organizations that go, like Lancer, that go into these countries and assist and help with the rescue, the girls have an opportunity to do that, which that in itself shows how God's love for them and his want for more for their lives and putting individuals there that can help, for he's the victor and he's a hero. And these girls are heroes because they're not letting this horrific, these horrific events in their lives to affect who they are and who they can become in the future. Yeah, that's absolutely beautiful. Well, we got to go to a break, but we will be right back with a whole lot more on this update from South America. Thanks for listening.

We'll be right back. 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. In today's episode, some amazing things that God is doing down in South America. And we might even make our way to the Caribbean here in a minute. But, Camp, can you give us some more details on some of the cases that you're working on currently in South America? Yes, some of the ones we just finished up. You know, I think it's important for the listeners to know just exactly, you know, some of the pain that some of these kids and women go through.

It's just ridiculous, really. But just to kind of give you some overview of something as well, you know, we had a 14-year-old girl who had a one-and-a-half-year-old son already. And they were both being sold for sexual encounters with the local people for $10 or $20 or for drugs, whatever the mom could get. You know, we've had some that were paid to be taken, you know, migrant smuggling from South America to the United States. And they're sexually abused on the way once they get to the border. You know, some of them they will cross, other ones they abandon near the Mexico-U.S. border. And, you know, they're just left there hopeless, hopeless. They spend every dime they have or their family has spent every dime they have to try to get them to the U.S. or a safer place. And so, you know, it's not only are they sexually abused along the way, you know, they don't even get to where they were hoping to get to. So there's this crush of so many different avenues in that situation. You know, we talked about the 13-year-old girl who was on her way to a prison to be sexually abused there by prisoners. You know, that just blows my mind how that would even occur or how something like that could happen. But it happens, you know.

It's a dark world. And that's why we do what we do. We love Land and Rescue. We love our mission and going out and helping people and pulling them from the darkness. And so, you know, and Victor can give you some more examples of what we've done in the last couple months.

Yeah, Victor, how about you? Yeah, we have. So we've had a couple of new investigations. We have one where the father is sexually abusing his own daughter.

We are trying to, and I believe the daughter's 13, 14 years of age. So we've been trying to, it's one of our main missions right now, is to try to get this guy's location, try to get him off the streets. From what we're told, they believe that it's not just his daughter that has happened. There's other individuals, other young girls that he's doing this to.

So it's just somebody that's trying to get him off the streets. Just so, you know, these young girls don't have to suffer. They don't have to go through this.

And there's no future victims either. So it's missions like these or operations like these that are important to the organization, to the country, to get individuals off of. Once it happens to an individual, it's important to get them off of the streets.

Because once it happens to an individual, to a young child, it's something that sticks with them for the rest of their lives. Yeah, and I really think, Victor, this is an opportunity for our listeners, right? You hear what's going on and God knows exactly who this man is and what Landon's up to. And so, you know, you can be in prayer that this man will make a mistake or whatever will happen that will make his location become evident to law enforcement there and that God will, you know, help us apprehend him because, you know, that's an ongoing investigation that's going on right now, right, Victor?

Yes. I mean, we have another operation where there is an individual who is, their entire career is focused on recruitment and trafficking of young individuals. There is coming, and they bring them from every part of the world, from all the Latin America countries. This individual has been exploited since they were about 17 years old, now 20. For three years, they've been stuck and nobody there to be an advocate for them, nobody prepared to rescue them. And from what Intel has for this individual is they have issues physically, mentally, that they're not, that they're not, they can't make decisions on their own. So they're, not only are they being assaulted, they don't know, they don't, how could I say this? So there's special needs, right? That they're... Yes. Yes. They don't have the mental capacity to understand the situation that they're in.

Right. So somebody like with Down syndrome or autism or those kinds of folks, you may know somebody like that. And unfortunately, you know, I can tell you, I taught special needs at our church for a number of years, almost 20, I guess, and, or over 20. But anyway, it's amazing how often those people are abused sexually and what it does to them because they can't fathom what's going on. I mean, it completely changes the personality of the most delightful people you'd ever want to be around to totally devastated and confused individuals. And so when I hear something like that, honestly, Victor, you know, it makes me mad. Because it's just, it's unthinkable that, you know, Satan would torture them or however it works, you know, it's just unthinkable, but you're exactly right. That's another great, great thing that we can be praying about that God will provide a way because He hears that suffering and that, you know, what's going on with that.

That's a tough one. So, Camp, we've got a few minutes left. We've got some other stuff that's going on over in the Caribbean you wanted to update our listeners on. Yeah, so we've had a footprint in some of the Caribbean countries for many years, even well before I came to Lantern. And, you know, a lot of the people in the police or high level government, they, you know, they change regularly, the contacts are lost. And so we've been spending the last couple months trying to, you know, rebuild those relationships and connect with the new leaders who have been places over units that deal with crimes against children and human trafficking.

So I'm happy to report that we have finally got all that set up and everything in place. One of the countries in the Caribbean actually had a hotline for people in that country to call in to report abuse, crimes against children, human trafficking, all those types of crimes, but it just kind of fell by the wayside over the years. It went from just being able to call in. And so now we we have provided that unit with a couple of new phones.

So we've updated the hotline, where they have text ability now, more modern phones, as well as you know, we're going to be pushing out the hotline to try to get that number back out again, because for so many years, it's kind of went dormant. But since we have reignited that partnership with law enforcement here, it's, it's really taken off. We've gotten so many new cases here. And unfortunately, they're, they're some of the some of the same, you know, 1314 year old girls being raped. We have a couple cases where, you know, they've been raped and involved in sex trafficking. And, you know, now they're pregnant. And now they're trying to decide what to do in their in this stage of the process and how to handle that. We're actively working a case now where a guy abducted a 13 year old girl, held her for several days and raped her.

And just let her go like, you know, like nothing was wrong, nothing had happened, you know, she's not going to go report it. So that is an active case that we are assisting in now and locating that that subject. So a lot of big things going on in the in the Caribbean, the more to come in the in the next few months.

But things are really getting some traction here. Darrell Bock And so what I understand, Victor, is sometimes when they go down there that you have a chance to go along. And from what I understand, they often ask you the, you know, what do we do with this situation?

So I'm curious, have you just had some experience there that helps out? Or how did God provide you with that wisdom? Victor Lopez Well, for me, I was, I was led when I was a little younger. I lived in the Marine Corps. I served six years as an infantry machine gunner. So did a lot of training with house clearing, TQV. And that's that area. It's a lot of what is done in these countries.

So they'll find a location where there's 1340 young girls being held, and they have to go in and they'll have to clear the entire building of individuals making detentions and getting these girls out of there. So with my time in the Marine Corps learning how to do this, I do get the opportunity to to teach what I was taught, what I learned in my time. And you know what brought me here to this point? I've always since a young, young child, I've always felt this responsibility to help others, to protect others. Anytime I saw something going on, that wasn't right.

I always would try to intervene and separate the two parts. And as I got older, the call was stronger. And once I became closer to God, it just became the fire lit even more. And then once I had my first opportunity, my first training exercises that I was able to provide with branch and rescue, it just like this is what I'm supposed to be.

These people can't help themselves. So God put me on this earth to help those who cannot. And it's a fire that burns daily. And it's something that I feel as though to the day that I'm no longer able to, I'll be doing this. And wherever I'm asked to go, I will go. And wherever I'm needed, I will assist.

Darrell Bock That is so awesome. I hate we're out of time. But guys, I really, really appreciate so much for being with us today. And I thank you all so much for listening. As you can hear, I bet God's put a call on your heart too, to do something in situations. So yes, you can pray about all those things we heard about today. But you can also go to landonrescue.org. And if God puts it on their heart to contribute, or to volunteer or whatever, it's all there at landonrescue.org. Again, I'm so grateful for all of you listening. God bless.