Trafficked FL Teen Rescued 800 Miles from Home, Expert Says 'Insidious Practice' Can Be Stopped
A Florida teenager was rescued from being trafficked last week after cops in North Carolina conducted a routine traffic stop on her kidnapper's car.
Alejandro Hernandez Vazquez was pulled over by deputies with the Nash County Police Department around midnight on July 4 for a traffic violation. A 16-year-old passenger, who had been reported as missing, was also in the vehicle.
During the stop, deputies had "developed reasonable suspicion to believe that criminal activity was afoot" after questioning Vazquez.
They also discovered that the teen was more than 800 miles from home. She was reported missing by the Coral Springs Police in Florida just five hours earlier.
"It was not like she was bound in the car and things of that nature, but you know, it's a young 16-year-old and a grown man, and he's manipulated her and carried her across this country," Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone told WTVD-TV. "This is a true case of child trafficking."
Stone believes the young girl traveled willfully with the 40-year-old. He suspects that they met online and he convinced her to leave her family behind.
"The suspect was not known to the family, nor did he have permission to transport the juvenile across state lines," police told ABC News.
Vazquez was arrested and placed in a North Carolina County jail for the abduction of the child and aiding in the delinquency of a minor.
He also faces felony charges for possession of narcotics.
The 16-year-old female has been returned safely to her family.
It's just the latest example of the ongoing global human trafficking crisis – a $150-billion per year criminal industry affecting 25 million people worldwide.
The United States ranks as one of the worst child trafficking countries in the world. One of the biggest areas for this problem in the U.S. southern border.
Jessica Vaughn, director for policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies told CBN News the traffickers have been enabled by the Biden administration's border policies.
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"We have such a bad problem with child-labor trafficking and child sex trafficking. And it is enabled by the Biden administration's policies of 'catch and release' at the border and then the relocation of the migrants to their destinations with almost no questions asked. [There] is not monitoring of what is happening to the kids that are let out of government custody and no vetting to the people to whom they are released," she explained.
"It is really astonishing how much the Biden administration is willing to look the other way at this insidious practice all to justify its mass immigration policy," Vaughn added. "It can be stopped if there is a will on the part of the federal government and its partners to do so."
