According to the Drug Enforcement Administration and based on my own personal experience as a former Federal Prosecutor in the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Division at DOJ, violent drug organizations often use human trafficking as a way to increase profits. They use the same trafficking routes and methods for drugs, sex and humans. Traffickers sometimes force migrants to pilot boats and use women and children who are also often victims of sex trafficking. Traffickers use drug addiction to control their slave like workers, to force long work hours and compliance and minimize escape attempts. Drug trafficking is inextricably linked with human and sex trafficking, often with mixed use vessels and vehicles. This is a law enforcement issue not a war.
Trump’s inhumane extrajudicial killings of unknown individuals in vessels near Venezuela violate U.S. and international law. How many innocent minors, victims of human and sex trafficking and people forced to drive vessels have been murdered? Their names and stories we will never know. God help us.
Pat DeConcini
Midtown
Disclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star.
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