Former left wing activist and Breitbart contributor Brandon Darby opined a disturbing column on July 30th detailing his efforts to get the FBI and the Department of Justice to act more diligently on child sex trafficking in the United States. The findings point to outright negligence.
The column, which is featured in Townhall Magazine, is prefaced by the notion that this isn’t a hit piece. It’s based on facts and from information ascertained by serious people who are in the FBI or work for them. One of them being another FBI asset named Dottie Laster, who helped Darby in this investigation.
Darby states that problems with pursuing a full investigation into sex trafficking of minors partially rested with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They seem to have problems coordinating, which is a typical problem in government. In fact, as Darby found out, any law enforcement agency receiving federal funds was required to inform ICE of any investigation involving human trafficking. A point of fact rendered moot by ICE’s penchant to go solo on raids.
In all, “ICE has a very thin charter, and removing possible illegal aliens took priority over prosecutable cases. If ICE engaged in a raid too soon, the local agency investigating the possible human trafficking was left with little evidence for prosecutions and therefore wasted much needed dollars and work hours. The end result of this dynamic was human traffickers walking away with little consequence, free to continue their enterprise, and law enforcement agencies that shied away from launching such investigations.”
However, concerning the FBI, which Darby states is an apex law enforcement agency, they have the full authority to launch investigations without informing local law enforcement or ICE. Thus, less red tape to get the job done and deliver these evildoers to justice right? Wrong. To further complicate matters, the U.S. Attorneys’ Office often didn’t have the resources to properly tend to the victims needs. These needs centered on basic amenities like food and shelter, hence, why most cases weren’t pursued by the Bureau. Darby pointed out that:
The FBI was dependent on the U.S. Attorneys’ Office to designate the victims as witnesses before resources were available to the victims. This dependence on the U.S. Attorneys’ Office for short-term and intermediate resources seemed to be the clog preventing freedom and safety for many trafficking victims based on my research and the FBI agents and assistant U.S. attorneys I [Darby] spoke with. Human traffickers often targeted illegal aliens who were already in the United States, or would kidnap and bring unwilling citizens from other countries across the United States’ porous border. Therefore, various types of visas would have to be made available for many victims if their testimony was needed to prosecute and neutralize the perpetrators of the slavery. However, other human trafficking victims were U.S. citizens who were either suffering from various addictions or were teenage runaways. Both Laster and I saw the same DOJ hesitancy to help in both groups.
Since food and shelter seemed to be at the heart of the hesitancy amongst the various agencies, Darby “[reached] out to the now-deceased Andrew Breitbart. In short order, Breitbart, Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, Hannah Giles and I created a nonprofit named Citizen Patriot Response to organize tea party groups to help communities and individuals in need without governmental funding and dependence.” Darby stated that this group wasn’t founded on the basis on human trafficking, but remains a critical issue. As a result, he used his home as a place of refuge for the exploited. Darby also began to work with a source within the FBI known as::
Special Agent X [who] began to dutifully examine the cases Laster and I presented…Laster and I presented dozens of cases to the FBI. Many of the cases involved minors who were being forced to have sex with adults for monetary reasons under the threat of violence from human traffickers. Special Agent X worked diligently to record our information and initiate investigations. Laster and I educated ourselves further on guidelines and protocols that the DOJ used in handling such cases. We felt assured by our research that it was a matter of law and a matter of internal policy that the FBI had to investigate and act on cases where minors were identified as being involved. All seemed well.
But the majority of the cases we worked on with Special Agent X never turned into investigations for the FBI—even the ones involving children that the FBI was mandated to act on. Special Agent X was shipped to a different part of the United States and was forbidden to work on human trafficking issues any further, even though the guidelines had been followed. I was deactivated without cause (meaning in good standing). As of press time, the new special agent assigned to Laster returned her call but hasn’t communicated with her about the cases.
What an absolute disgrace.
