By David Krayden – The Post Millennial
A human trafficking sting called Operation Autumn Sweep nabbed 157 suspects, including three Disney employees and 25 illegal immigrants in Polk County, FL. Police also rescued four potential victims of human trafficking in the process, Fox13 reported Thursday.
Those charged were allegedly soliciting prostitutes or offering to commit prostitution. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told a news conference Thursday that, of those arrested, 47 were prostitutes, 96 were clients, 1 was a human trafficker, and 14 had other charges pending. Judd noted that the eldest client was 61 and the youngest was only 15. He said the group had a total of 327 prior felony and 400 misdemeanor charges.
“16 percent of these total arrests were people who should not even have been in this country, but they were here, and they were here because we have a federal government that enabled these criminals to come into the country, and then treated them very well after the criminals came here illegally,” said Judd.
Judd said that two of the potential victims of human trafficking were illegal immigrants who had to pay off their debt to cartel smugglers by having sex up to 20 times a day. If they balked at this order, Judd said their handler would slap and choke them.
The sheriff noted that, of the accused, 26 are married and numerous engaged. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office said that three of those charged work at Disney World.
Three suspects in addition to the 157 have been charged with soliciting sex online from three individuals that they believed to be children. They were charged with traveling to meet a minor, attempted lewd and lascivious battery on a minor, and using a computer to seduce a child. A Disney World employee is one of those suspects, a second is working in Florida but from another state, and the third is an illegal immigrant. Judd said, “What would any of our undercover operations be – where we’re dealing with human trafficking, prostitution, child predators – without Disney? We always arrest Disney employees.”
The arrests come as reports of sex trafficking of immigrant children have more than tripled during the Biden-Harris administration’s open border policies. Customs and Border Protection agents have warned that many children being smuggled across the border are ripe for exploitation, often as prostitutes or sex slaves.
The Biden-Harris administration has admitted that it cannot account for the whereabouts of at around 300,000 immigrant children.