Answering the Prayers of Children: Bazzel Baz Rescuing Kids From Traffickers

When you see a photo of a wolf, there’s something that’s almost supernatural in its eyes that seems poised, soulful, and constantly assessing everything. It can stalk its prey without detection and will see you long before you ever see it. 

When you look into Bazzel Baz’s eyes, there’s that very same look. It speaks of wisdom that only comes from having experienced situations in our world that most people have the luxury of not knowing about. His ability to survive in those environments came from tradecraft developed in the Marines and later in the CIA. 

Over the last few decades, he’s been targeting those involved in the most insidious crime in the world — human trafficking. What he knows will change what you believed one human being was capable of doing to another.

Human trafficking has been around since Biblical times. Only recently has that term become a bit more colloquial due to people like Jeffrey Epstein and survivors coming forward to speak out about how pervasive these networks really are. Now that the public is hearing about other well-known figures being linked to this world, you have to ask yourself how deep it runs and what’s being done. 

We spoke with Bazzel to get an understanding of his background and the work his organization, Association for the Recovery of Children (ARC), is out there doing. We hope you’ll read this not as a source of information or entertainment, but as a call to help join the fight to save our future generations from a life of unspeakable horror. 

Bazzel Baz

• Family: Married with two stepdaughters
• Favorite quotes:
  • “It’s not how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get back up that counts.”
  • “It’s not getting from point A to point B that matters. It’s what you do between those two times when everything goes upside down.”
  • “As it was in the days of Moses, so shall it be with you to the end of time.”
  • “If you always do what’s right, you can’t be wrong.”
• Favorite song: “The Marines' Hymn”
• Best advice you ever got: “Discretion is the greatest part of valor.”
• Childhood heroes: His father, mom, grandfather, sister, and other members of his family.
• Recommended reading list:
  • The Bible
  • A Ready Defense by Josh McDowell
  • Something Bigger Than Overthrowing Small Governments by Bazzel Baz
  • Scattering Other Men’s Ashes (book still in progress) by Bazzel Baz
• Everyday Carry: Glock 19
• Finish this sentence: “Bazzel Baz is…”: “…very grateful to have had an opportunity to serve his Lord, the Master on this earth, in saving children.”
• Website: recoveryofchildren.org

Where did you grow up and what were your parents like?  

Bazzel Baz: My grandfather came to America in 1914 from Beirut, Lebanon. He was Druze. Prior to that, his ancestors date back on one side of his family to The Crusaders at Fort Beaufort, Lebanon, in 1060. Further back, they come out of the Holy Scriptures between Isaiah and Prophetess, so that’s where the family name comes from. He came here in 1914 and ended up marrying a Native American woman in South Carolina. She was Waccamaw. They had 12 kids and one of those kids was my father. They settled in Georgetown, South Carolina, which was an old American Revolution kind of town. 

So out of that, my father ended up joining the Air Force for about four years. He married my mom; she was from that area. When my grandmother passed away, he got out of the Air Force and then about a year later he got back in the Army. So I was born in Albany, Georgia. I grew up in a military family. He was an 8th Special Forces Green Beret out of Panama. He had a couple of tours in Vietnam. Before that he had tours in Korea. So like the typical military family, about every three years we traveled all across the U.S. and then some overseas tours. 

My father, being a lot wiser than me, gave me his advice and I applied to all the service academies. Fortunately, under Senator Sam Nunn I got congressional recommendations to all of the service academies, but I chose to go to The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. I graduated from The Citadel in 1978 and entered the United States Marine Corps as a 2nd Lt. after Bulldog (OCS). I spent seven years in the Corps and then was recruited by the CIA for Special Operations under Ground Branch and then served out another 10 years under Ground Branch and Maritime Branch in the Clandestine Service. 

How long were you in the CIA and how did you first become aware of human trafficking?

BB: I was in the Agency from ’85 to ’96. In 1993, I found myself in Mogadishu Somalia. Most people remember that from an incident called Black Hawk Down. The CIA were the first on the ground to send teams in to do assessments, reopen the embassy, and a bunch of other stuff. I was part of those teams that went in. I had some attachments from Centre Spike and some unofficial attachments from the Marine Corps, so that’s one way to commandeer a 50-cal on the back of a Humvee. 

We were in a safe house and on that given day we were traveling to meet with the station chief over on Ali Mahdi’s side. We saw a couple of little girls that were dressed in green T-shirts and blue jeans of all things and had aviator glasses on. They didn’t look like they were from Somalia, but I was wondering why they were hiding under some debris just outside a French Foreign Legion camp. We drove by and went back to the safe house. 

That caught our attention and we started discussing what we could do to save them, but at the same time we realized that by tomorrow they’d probably be collateral damage. During that time it was fairly common to drive the streets and just see dead bodies everywhere. Our mission wasn’t to save kids; we had a different mission, which was intelligence collection and a number of other things. 

I remember being in the safe house and I went back up on the roof that night. It was just kind of tugging on my heart. I looked up and the African sky was just blanketed with a billion stars to the point that it would be undeniable that there was a God. I remember looking up and just saying out loud, “God, why aren’t you doing something about this?” And out of nowhere, like audibly, it shook me to the bone and I tell a lot of people this all the time, I heard a voice that said, “I did. I created you.” I turned around thinking that it was one of my team guys and there was nobody there. And there was this like almost otherworldly kind of vibration. It really shook me to my knees. I collected myself and that experience stuck with me like cement. 

I went down to a team briefing on some intelligence issues and as soon as we finished, one of the guys (Rich) said, “By the way, there’s this crazy American woman from New York and she’s opened an orphanage right here in the war zone.” All of a sudden the light bulb went on in all our heads and we were all thinking the same thing — that we could take those two little kids there. So the next day we locked and loaded, went out and found them, and took them to that orphanage. Sure enough, there was a woman there from New York. I actually just caught up with who she is. One day I hope I run into her and thank her for being there. 

I remember she said to us that she had like 210 more orphans there and said, “I can’t even feed these and can’t take anymore. One of the Center Spike guys said, “What if I make you a deal? What if I can get food for all 200 of these kids for like six months?” She said, “If you can do that then I’ll take these girls.” 

They actually took the girls there. Before we left, the youngest of those girls was crying and she came up to us and we had an Arab translator. They asked us to go get their mother and their little brother. So over the course of the next four days, we were able to locate the mother and their younger brother who was about a year old in a refugee camp and we reunited all of them. So that was my first look into the issue of children who are displaced. 

When I got back to the United States I wrestled with that idea because I kind of thought all children grew up like I did — went to school, had a family, etc. I started asking questions and much to my surprise, from my law enforcement associates, they said at that time we had about 250,000 kids missing in our country. I asked, what does “missing” mean? And they said they were just missing. 

They didn’t know what it meant, but it wasn’t really a priority for them. Missing children were at the bottom of their list. They had budgetary constraints, communication constraints from state to state, and listed off everything you could think of to say they didn’t have what it took to go get kids. 

I started diving more into the term “missing kids” and there was a thing that people weren’t talking about called child sex trafficking and child pornography. It was kind of being overlooked or pushed under the rug. I’m not sure what America’s excuse was at that time, but it wasn’t being talked about. From ’93 to ’96 I was still in the Agency and it became a calling for me to the point that, between those three years, I found and rescued a number of kids. 

The first kid I rescued had been taken out of the U.S. by a cartel member. I went and got that kid and brought her back to her mother. Then, it was like, oh, I can do this. Then, I went and got another one, and another. Then, by ’96, there were things happening in the Agency among operation officers and changes that needed to be made. I had such a desire to do something about this issue that I jumped ship and pushed forward with the Association for the Recovery of Children [ARC], which is the nonprofit that I started in ’93. 

How did you go about forming ARC?

BB: In ’96, when I got out, a number of my close friends in Tier 1 Operations offered to help. I told them I couldn’t pay them. They just offered to volunteer, so it was just a few of us at first. It gradually grew and for 33 years we’re the oldest running child rescue organization that I know of. From there I knew that we had to have a strike force recovery team and boots on the ground because the reality is awareness of trafficking was becoming popular, but people didn’t realize that awareness doesn’t bring a kid home. A kid doesn’t come until there are boots on the ground that can physically get their hands on a kid and bring them back to a safe place. 

I don’t know how many people remember the old milk carton missing kid thing. It was a good effort, but you’d go buy your milk, look at the picture, and felt like you were doing something about it by looking at the picture of the missing kid. When the milk was gone that carton went in the trash. Did that kid come home? No. Did they make an effort to go out on the streets and find that kid? No, for many reasons. What brings a kid home are people being equipped and knowing what to do to go locate a kid and bring them home. 

Understanding the area of operation is very important for that. I realize that it’s not enough to think that someone else is doing it. If it’s going to be done right, I had to be the guy to go do it. We started taking all the worst cases that no one else wanted to go after because maybe they were gang or cartel related and law enforcement either couldn’t, wouldn’t, or weren’t equipped to. We got good at it and over time we recruited more people to be part of admin, recovery team members, attorneys, and so forth. To this day, we’re one of the most effective and have had a 100 percent success rate. Every kid we’ve gone after, we’ve brought home. 

When I was in Ground Branch, I think there were maybe 28 of us in the whole world. There are hundreds of paramilitary case officers now, but at that time we were a small group, but we were very effective. We brought down the whole Soviet Army in Afghanistan, got the Cubans kicked out of Angola, were involved in Iran-Contra, and the list goes on. It just takes a few of the right people and so that’s how we patterned ARC. To this day, when we bring someone onboard, we still do that. 

I talked to a guy at the gym today and the one thing that came out of his mouth that told me he was the right guy for it, he said, “I don’t want to be paid for it. I just want to save kids.” That is just the opposite of someone who asks me how much I pay. I wish we could pay salaries, but it tells me where a man’s heart is. If you have a good heart and you know that you’re the only one who can go save that kid, what are you willing to sacrifice to do it? Everyone on our team is willing to give their life to save a kid. 

How would you define human trafficking?

BB: The normal reply to that is that it’s the sale of a human being regardless of age for sex. I’ll bring it down to the nuts and bolts of what child sex trafficking is. It’s a 7-year-old girl chained to the floor of a closet, with cigarette burns all over her body, who hasn’t been fed in days, but has been raped by male and female predators 15 times a day with so many STDs and trauma that she’ll be lucky if she lives past 12. That’s what child sex trafficking is. There’s no one who can tell me that’s not the truth because that’s what we see in the trenches. 

It infuriates me when people in America don’t think it’s happening. It makes me more furious when I come up against people who do this to children. This is one of the reasons we are strong advocates of the death penalty in our country for anyone who grooms or rapes a child. DeSantis passed it. I spoke to the attorney general two years ago about the death penalty in Idaho. I think they just passed that, if you rape a child, it’s death by firing squad. 

Until we set harsh penalties, they’re going to keep going after our kids. It’s a $150 billion or more global market when it comes to sex trafficking. In America, we should be ashamed of ourselves. We are the largest purchasers of child sex and child pornography than any other country in the world. 

What can you tell me about how your group locates a missing child and organizes a rescue effort?

BB: We have a lot of ways we learn about a missing kid. Law enforcement partners will send us stuff and we’re well known across America. We’re saturated. When we get a case, the first thing I do is pray about it. We have people in our organization who love God and God loves children. 

You think I’m going to go down to some dark quagmire and not have God on my side? Not happening because there’s such a huge spiritual component to this that is undeniable. It’s just evil and there’s just no answer as to why anyone would brutalize a child. If you want to get to the heart of God, that’s what you do. You destroy children. So that’s the first thing I do is see if this is something God wants us to take on. 

Second thing is the contextual analysis to determine if the child is even alive. The third thing we do is make sure we have team members who aren’t obligated to another operation that we can dedicate to this specific child. Fourth is see if we have money in the budget to go rescue the kid. We don’t take government grants. We’re not a wealthy $30 million operation. We rely on donations and kindness of people around us. I must have close to 3,000 résumés of people who want to work for ARC, but our command center isn’t big enough. 

Building that army out is important to us so we have the people to handle all the cases 24/7. Once we determine we have a budget for it, we launch a team in the field. Every operation is different. Some operations are $5,000 because that’s what it takes to fly the team around the U.S. We had an operation where an American kid was taken to Cambodia and that was $70,000. A third of that was nothing but flights. We’re not staying in hotels and driving fancy cars. Most of the time we’re running surveillance out of garbage dumpsters, wooded areas, and places like that. 

If you have any child rescue operation that’s staying in five-star hotels and that stuff, I think it’s questionable. The money has to go toward the operation. We have an accounting firm that keeps us transparent so if anyone questions where the money’s going we can account for every penny of that. That’s how we go and rescue the kid. Sometimes the kid will go back to the custodial guardians. Sometimes that’s where the problem started. It’d probably not surprise you how many parents sell their children into sex slavery in America. We can’t return them there and don’t want to return them to CPS [child protective services]. 

Anyone that’s in the trenches knows that CPS is broken. I boldly say they have their own corruption going on. There are accounts of CPS trafficking children and investigations there right now. We have trusted aftercare partners that are well vetted and a lot of times we’ll take those kids there. 

That often takes a court order to transport those children from point A to B, so we keep it all on the up and up. Without getting into tradecraft, if you take what you know about tactics, military clandestine service, and how people go behind the veil to track down predators, you can imagine what we put into that to go rescue a child. 

You mentioned CPS. Is the foster care system just as corrupt?

BB: It is. I may stand corrected on the percentage, but I believe our director of human trafficking said that about 60 percent of the trafficking of children comes out of foster care. When she visited inmates in prison, 90 percent of those on death row were once foster kids. It’s not a good program. There are good foster parents, but the foster care system in California was getting like $14,000 a month per child. Who can spend that much a month on a child? Where does the rest of the money go? When a foster family has eight kids, do you know how much money that is? There’s no oversight most of the time. 

We don’t know what’s happening with those children. We don’t know if they’re being molested in the foster care home or if they’re being trafficked. Common sense says that’s a lot of money going into someone’s pocket. Chances are if you were to go into a foster home and see the condition of the children in some of the homes, you’d be like, wait, isn’t there money that’s supposed to clothe and feed these kids? So it too is a nefarious business in the hands of the wrong people. 

Do you make a distinction between pedophiles and traffickers?

BB: There are different kinds of traffickers. There’s labor trafficking, child sex trafficking, prostitution. So trafficking is that you’re selling a commodity. If we’re talking about the human commodity, you’re making money off it. Pedophiles don’t necessarily traffic kids. A pedophile may just molest, rape, and or murder a child. 

We generally call them predators, and traffickers can be predatory as well. There are traffickers and pedophiles that spend a lot of time grooming children. Pedophiles and traffickers are both looking for a face-to-face encounter and the grooming is so that can happen and the child is then abducted. For traffickers, the purpose may just be to make money. For a pedophile, it may be sexual satisfaction. 

You’ve probably debriefed a lot of pedophiles. How does that compulsion develop? What patterns are you seeing?

BB: The pedophiles I’ve interviewed have all said the same thing. These have been predators behind bars. I let them talk and tell their story and ask what the one thing they think would’ve prevented them from committing this crime. 

Every single one has said the same thing. If they thought they were going to get the death penalty, they probably would’ve thought about it twice. I even know of one I’ve spoken to who said, “I need to stay behind bars because if I get out, I’m going to rape children again. I can’t help myself.” I don’t really care what causes that. It’s wrong, but I do care about protecting children. 

There’s not a kid in this country we shouldn’t protect. They should be able to live their life knowing that no harm will come to them and that’s our responsibility as a nation. It’s our responsibility to put measures in place so that can happen. It’s not five or 20 years behind bars. It’s like, guess what? You no longer get to exist on this planet because you have breached the trust of the most innocent of our society and we will not have that happen. 

With traffickers I’ve spoken to after they’ve been caught and incarcerated, it was a business deal for them. It was about money. They were trafficking drugs, weapons, and children or adults. The interesting thing about drugs, money, and weapons is you can’t have sex with those things. 

With a human being, you can have sex or torture them to break them in if you’re a trafficker. Then, of course, there are those traffickers who don’t want “damaged goods.” They know if they have an undamaged, blonde girl from Holland or the U.S. that their buyer is willing to pay a higher fee for an innocent virgin who hasn’t been molested. 

That may bring a higher price than an almost-dead girl or boy because they’ve been raped so many times. There are buyers for that too though. In the world of prostitution, there are also boys and men who are trafficked, but they don’t speak about it unless they get out and are older because of the shame. A lot of the women who were prostitutes will give you their whole story about how they’re only good to their pimp until they’re about 28. 

By then they’re all used up and they either become a bottom girl who runs a stable, they’re disposed of, or they somehow escape and tell their story. They’re pretty worn out by then and they’re not pretty anymore. Like any commodity, if it’s nice and shiny it catches a buyer’s eye, but if it’s all rusted out, it’s not something anyone wants. 

Do you feel like society’s propensity for violent, extreme sex is getting worse? If so, why?

BB: We’re an oversexualized society. If you look at the amount of pornography viewed by society, that’s a contribution. There’s hundreds of studies out there that everyone looking at pornography, men or women, want something younger. Maybe you start out looking at porn of women in their 20s and you’re not satisfied. 

Now they’re in their teens, and now it’s children. Take a look at what just happened with another teacher recently caught molesting a 15-year-old. What’s the amount of female teachers sexually molesting boys? Where’s that coming from? Look at the amount of men in high schools molesting young children. Look at the number of daycare center people, like this case in Manhattan Beach, California, where they were molesting little kids. 

I think it’s two types of influences. I think it’s demonic. We try to deny the spiritual component that tries to influence that kind of behavior and I’ll tell you after doing this for 30-some years that it’s a major factor. The other one that’s fueling the fire is looking at porn. Whether it’s on PornHub or wherever, you think that’s how sex should be and it starts getting all sideways. We don’t want to make sex dirty because then husbands and wives will be having problems. 

In the right context in a marriage it can be a beautiful thing. But outside of that what we see is a tremendous amount of abuse. There’s no love involved. It’s about owning, conquering, and controlling. When it comes to sex trafficking, it’s also about money. I don’t think we’re ever going to stop child sex trafficking in America until God comes back, but we can define success by one child at a time. We can say, as a nation, not on my watch. 

How often do you see the occult intermingled with trafficking?

BB: We’re seeing more of it. The last four years it kind of raised its ugly head and we started seeing more satanic ritual abuse than we had ever seen previously, so it’s on the increase. One of the reasons it’s on the increase is because it’s more accepted by society. Witches, demons, Satan — I hate to say it, but this Biden Administration just kind of encouraged that stuff and made it OK. We have more victims now who can testify to it, so it’s mapped out pretty well now. It’s not as hidden as it used to be. 

It’s more open now, especially in the entertainment industry where people are reenacting rituals on stage and dancing. It’s growing and that doesn’t surprise me because, before 47 got in place, the moral compass was all over the place. I’m grateful that General Mike Flynn, 47, and the people on his transition team all have a good moral compass. I’m not saying they’re flawless, but the majority believe in one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. They believe in the Constitution, what our founding fathers believed in. They believe that one nation under God is a really important thing if we are to survive the corruption in the world and the countries around us.

How do the categories of traffickers break down?

BB: There’s child sex trafficking and trafficking of adults. There’s organ harvesting, which is on the rise as well. There’s pornography of both children and adults. There’s the sale of women and children to members of elite clubs, political positions, and world leaders. There’s the standard sex slave market where there’s hundreds of young girls from all over the world who are transported to another country basically as slaves for a number of people, so those are the major categories we deal with. 

Organ harvesting has surfaced more over the last year. I knew it was happening, but I just didn’t have the opportunity to interview anyone involved in it. Then, we had someone in prison we had an opportunity to speak with who gave us the whole rundown. There are veterinary clinics in countries like Mexico that do organ harvesting late at night on children because there’s a black market for it.

Or we have intel on children that are being taken out of the U.S. and being shipped through Mexico to North Africa for organ harvesting because they’re considered to be less parasitic, meaning their organs would be healthier. That’s not necessarily the case because kids in the U.S. might have as many parasites as anywhere else, but it’s what people are led to believe when they’re looking for an organ. 

They aren’t put into a hospital where a surgical team does this meticulous operation and the child is on their way to recovery. A lot of times bodies are found where kids are zippered up and their organs are removed. Some are still alive and some are dead. It’s a horrible industry and when you talk to people about it or show them photos of what you’ve discovered, they’re just like,“Oh I don’t believe that — it’s a conspiracy.” Kind of like what they found out about the COVID vaccine. Guess what? All that stuff wasn’t a conspiracy and neither is this. 

Who are the biggest players in the world of trafficking?

BB: When you use the term “cartel,” a lot of people think about the big Mexican cartels like CJNG, Sinaloa, or MS-13, but the cartel is really around the world. In fact, the cartel really has more money than almost any government. It’s hard to compete against that. It’s mostly cartels and gangs pushing the market, but it can also be crime syndicates. The best term is really just to say the criminal enterprise. Whatever is a part of that enterprise is generally responsible for trafficking people. 

That doesn’t mean a pimp in Chicago couldn’t be trafficking five kids. They can do it at that lower level as well. One of the other things we’re seeing, and if we play our cards right, there’ll be some exposure on global leaders that’ve participated in trafficking children.

I’m hesitant to say much more because it’s still being investigated, but I can say that it doesn’t surprise me that elites, global leaders, and people in positions of authority in governments have participated in not only child sex trafficking, but just the predatory acts of having sex with children. Take a look at all the people who went to Epstein Island and there were children down there. Prince Andrew got caught. We’ve had all these crazy things that’ve happened with people of royalty and influence, corporate leaders, as if it’s a privilege for them to do that.

It’s interesting because we keep talking about child sex trafficking, and it is slavery, but the slaves are of every creed and color you can think of. Oftentimes children being put in sex slavery are being done so by their own people. Here’s an example. Two years ago in the Dakotas there were 1,200 Native American girls missing. 

We went to the Lakota Reservation two years ago and we offered a free training course for anybody on the res that would come there. Only about five women showed up. We asked them where all the men were, and these women were very honest with me and they said their men won’t come to this because they’re part of the problem. 

I said, “What you do you mean?” They said, “Well, we have incest and a lot of our girls are being sold off to MS-13.” I said, “Wait a minute, you have MS-13 on the res?” And they said, “Yeah, they’re on the res and are in business with some of our tribal leaders. They have a drug they create, sell, and transfer out of there and a lot of our young girls are transported out of there as well because Native American girls are very exotic. You can’t tell whether they’re Chinese, Japanese, or Native American. They have that really exotic look.” 

Here’s a culture that we honor. My grandmother was Native American and we’re going, “Wait a minute. You’re selling off your own people? This is dishonorable. This is nothing your grandfathers would approve of or the tribe.” And yet it’s being done. We have it being done in the white community, in the black community, in the Chinese community. If you’re an American, you have a responsibility to our children in this country to protect them no matter where they come from. 

Can you tell us what the most common ways are that trafficking takes place? 

BB: It generally starts at home with Uncle Bobby. When you’re not watching your kids, they get molested by their dad, their mom, an uncle, or whoever it may be and then from there, they’re sold off, groomed, sexualized early, they end up not finishing school, and next thing you know they’re being trafficked on the streets. That's pretty common to be honest; that’s kind of how it happens. 

A lot of people think it’s mostly kids that are in poverty. No, it’s not. I can send you to people like Kelly Patterson who is a good friend of ours. She runs a great organization [Treasured Lives]. Kelly was trafficked and she came from a very nice family. They never knew that she was being trafficked when she was in high school. She’s got a great story, so there’s no one certain type of family when it comes to being trafficked. 

I will tell you there is a common denominator. When children don’t feel loved or aren’t cared for by their parents, they’re susceptible to the targeting of a pimp or somebody else who’ll walk up and say, “I love you. Hey, I’ll take care of you. Hey, I’ll buy you food.” They incentivize them. Most of the time it’s a Romeo pimp or trafficker, or it could be anybody that just wants to take advantage of them. Those are easy targets. With the advent of technology, kids are getting groomed online because parents aren’t watching who they’re talking to. 

During COVID, we had an upsurge of children being trafficked online. A 16-year-old thought she was talking to another 16-year-old, but she was really talking to a 36-year-old who says, “Meet me at Starbucks.” She goes down there, gets a face to face, and she’s gone. That’s the stupidity of parents. They don’t have any common sense. They lock the front and back doors so no burglars can get in, but yet they leave the door to their computer wide open for anybody to come into that kid’s bedroom. I don’t know what they’re thinking. They don’t care about loving, raising, or protecting their kids and that’s one of the major problems we have in America. 

Why are traffickers often drawn to areas that are war-torn, destitute, or ravaged by natural disasters? 

BB: Anytime you have a war-torn area or disaster, you’ve got people focusing on the disaster more than you do the children, so the children just kind of get left and lost. Traffickers know that it’s easy to scoop up children because maybe people think the child died in the disaster, the war zone, or whatever. There’s nobody looking for them or watching out for them necessarily. When you’re living in a situation that's life and death every day, sometimes it’s easy for you to get distracted and you’re not looking at all the kids or you’re not concerned.   

I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you have a schoolhouse full of orphans and you have a tsunami happen, so all the firefighters, police, the people are just trying to keep their head above water. They’re trying to survive with their own family, but nobody’s thinking about the 12 orphans. They’re thinking somebody’s taking care of them. Well, somebody may not be taking care of them and they dropped to the bottom of the list — that’s an easy target. Traffickers of that nature are looking for a distraction. Big families are easily separated in disasters, so they take advantage of that situation. 

What sorts of anti-trafficking efforts by the government do you think have had the most success so far? 

BB: 47 is the only one that really got in the game to be honest with you that I’m aware of, particularly when he was 45. This is a major issue with the President. He understands the value and the future of our country rests in the children that are going to be adults one day and they don’t need to grow up dysfunctional. I know this for a fact, and I know it is with General Mike Flynn because I’m on his advisory board, America’s Futures, for his sister Mary Flynn O’Neill and that’s all about anti-trafficking, so this is a major issue with them.

I think we’re going to see something done about it now, but before it wasn’t being done. During the Biden Administration we were one of the first teams on the ground at Wilson Airfield in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at 2 a.m. when night flights came in and deposited children on the tarmac, loaded them on buses, took them to other areas, pulled them off the buses, and handed them over to people who were not even their relatives. We noted this. I sent a report up to ICE, and two weeks later my ICE contact came back and said this is being handled by the Biden Administration and they said hands off. They told ICE to stand down. 

Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Democrats were involved in the largest illegal human trafficking industry in the history of the United States. I say this unashamedly. They should be put in prison. It’s not only treason, but it’s trafficking. 

In fact, they should suffer the death penalty as well as predators. We know for a fact that open border situation they allowed brought in traffickers, brought in children that are being trafficked, and we have illegal immigrant children we can’t even find right now because of them. The question is, where are they? Are they being used for child pornography? Are they being used for child sex? Yes, some of them are. So they did absolutely nothing. 

In fact, even the FBI under Christopher Wray stood down on child sex trafficking. We’ve got the memo that said it is no longer a priority for the FBI. That’s all going to change gears now with 47 in place. If it is to change, this is the administration to do it. 

When Sound of Freedom came out, there seemed to be concerted effort against Tim Ballard and that movie. Do you think that’s because there’s a concerted effort in the media to suppress information about trafficking? 

BB: That is one thing, yes. I know there’s a dark side of the media. They always want to go after people that are doing good things. I know Tim very well. We don’t work with them for many reasons. We work inside the United States. I would say that they’ve taken a lot of criticism and we’re just at the 14,000-foot level just watching it all play itself out with the accusations and stuff like that about him and OUR [Operation Underground Railroad]. 

Despite the criticism, I think people need to understand that the message that came out through Sound of Freedom was that children are being trafficked and that’s a very big message. What I’d like people to understand is that it’s not happening just over there, it’s happening right here in America. If you saw Sound of Freedom and it tugged on your heart, please know that’s happening here in America on a scale that’s 1,000 times bigger than that. 

A lot of NGOs make claims like they rescued 3,000 kids last year. I’ve been doing this for 33-plus years. Sometimes it takes us a month just to find and rescue one kid. I’d like to walk into a warehouse, stumble on 30 kids, and rescue all 30 kids, but out of all my years of doing this we’ve yet to see that happen. When I hear these extraordinary numbers, I sit back and go, OK, 3,000 kids last year. Wow. How did you do that? 

Even in America with the number of NGOs that are popping up because trafficking is such a popular phrase, people aren’t being called to it as much as they think it’s something to feed their own ego. It’s becoming big business here as well, so when you have an organization that falls on its sword, gets caught committing fraud, or it’s not telling the truth or whatever it may be, it hurts all the really good NGOs that’ve been honest since they were formed and makes it really rough for them to get donations. 

For us, there’s only a few organizations we work with in America that we’ve vetted like Craig “Sawman” Sawyer of Veterans for Child Rescue, Rudy Gonzales of SERT, The CARE Organization, Kristi Wells with the Safe House Project, The Wellhouse, The Remnant, Black Passport Group, Sovereign Intel, and other NGOs. We vet those that want to come on board as strategic partners. I can’t tell you how many times we just caught certain NGOs in a pack of lies. We know aftercare facilities that say they have 40 beds and they get grant money for 40 beds, but when you go and check, they only have four beds. So where’s the extra money going? It’s going in their pockets. That’s very common in America. We can attest to that and we have a lot of evidence on that.

What’s the best advice you could give to people about what they can do to contribute to putting a stop to this issue?

BB: They have to care enough to want to put a stop to it. It’s not just about writing a check to make yourself feel good. I’ve had some donors that’ve wanted to write checks. I remember one in particular, I was told he was a multi-billionaire of all things. 

I got on the phone and spent an hour talking with him and said, “Before you write a check or consider donating, I’d like you to know where that money’s gonna go. Would you please consider coming to our six-day fight child trafficking/equipping course, so that you understand the area of operation and know what this money’s going to?” He never did come. 

If you’re going to donate your money, do your research. The best research is for people to look a little bit into your organization. We’re not going to take them on an operation with us, but we have testimony, after testimony, after testimony. People know us, but we always offer for people to come see where this money goes. You come to one six-day course, you’re going to know where your money’s going. That’s how we do it. 

I’m not going to risk my team and risk the life of a child just so a millionaire can feel cool about himself. It doesn’t work that way in the real world. If there’s somebody out there that is thinking about doing that, go on our website to recoveryofchildren.com and it shows you training courses we have throughout the year. Come to it and I’m pretty sure you’ll be satisfied, and you’ll know you can donate to this organization. 

What do you think the average parent should know about how traffickers infiltrate children’s lives? 

BB: Never say it can’t and don’t be surprised if it does. Children are a commodity now and I would say, No. 1 that every parent needs to know what their kids are doing on their computer, on their phone, and who they’re talking to all the time. 

There needs to be restrictions put in place, and it doesn’t matter whether the child likes it or not. I see kids that are 12 or 13 years old with phones and their parents aren’t checking. You don’t even know who they’re talking to. Understand as a parent that your child is a target whether you want them to be or not. 

You should know who their teachers are. There’s not a parent out there that shouldn’t run a background investigation on every single teacher in their school. The schools don’t always check for that. Why are we having to solve these problems like predator teachers attacking our children in school? Because people aren’t doing their research and not checking to find out who they’re putting their child in the hands of. 

Heck, go find out what your pastor is like. Sexual abuse in the churches is a big thing with pastors and deacons involved in pornography and molesting children. While I wish it was as sacred and holy as it’s supposed to be, we see that happen a lot these days no matter what the denomination is. Parents should be determined to care about the issue. If you really love your children, then you’re going to protect your children and educate yourself on what trafficking is all about in the United States. 

Does your organization go to schools and address this with the students or the faculty and give them a course to go through?

BB: We do actually. We’ll be up in Estes Park, Colorado, providing a one-day course for all the teachers and parents, and told the parents that they could bring their kids or their students if they wanted to. When we get invited in, we generally will do a one-day course. It’s about eight hours, but it gives them a great look into what we’re talking about. 

It’s not the six-day training course, which is pretty intense. That’s for people that want to go out and understand the area of operation and actually rescue kids, but it does make them very aware of what the issue is all about, what to look for, and what they should be doing about it to protect their children. Anytime we get invited in, we would ask them to cover travel expenses, but we don’t charge them for the one-day course. It’s what we think is the right thing to do. 

If you could wave a magic wand, what kind of legislation would you want put in place to help you?

BB: Here’s what I would do, particularly now since we had the open border situation and we’re starting to see more rapes and child abuse by illegal immigrants. For every child that was molested or raped by an illegal immigrant, the parents of that child would not only have the opportunity to bring criminal charges against that illegal alien, but they would have the right to bring criminal charges against anyone in Congress that voted for the open border policy and brought those people into their area to molest and rape their child. I would hold policymakers accountable for their actions. 

For too long in Congress, they just made policies that had horrible repercussions against the American people and they never suffered for it at all. I think that they’ve gotten so used to that, that they just flagrantly tossed policy back and forth as if it didn’t really affect them. Outside of the death penalty, that would be the next bit of legislation that I’d pass so that if a senator or congressman made some decision like this that they’d think twice about it because they’d go to jail for their actions. 

We know there are people in congress that, when this was being debated, they knew that terrorists and pedophiles were coming across. They knew there was child sex trafficking and yet they still did nothing about it except back the Biden Administration on the open border policy. That’s like me standing in the house with you and I have a vicious dog outside and I opened the door and let the dog come in and attack you. Am I complicit in that crime? Of course I am. Now the reason we don’t see a lot of that is because a lot of congressmen have immunity, but they don’t have immunity against federal crimes, so that is the bill that I would pass in congress. 

What’s the future hold for you and how are you developing people to help pick up the torch and run with it? 

BB: In my mind and heart, by the time I leave this earth I want this organization to still be in place, effective, and feared by every predator and trafficker out there, so that they know that when ARC is involved that they’re going down.