Rescue missions don’t always go as planned, and this time the bad guys won.
Sebastian, who asked not to use his real name because of the nature of his undercover work, was emotional when he described how he had arrived too late to the undisclosed location in California. By the time he got there, the children had already been moved by the predators who are trafficking them and using them in pornographic films.
Typically, these rescues have happier endings, and Sebastian was taking this loss hard, knowing the fate of the children, all of whom are under 8 years old.
“It was a bad day,” he told Cowboy State Daily with emotion in his voice.
His dedication speaks for itself. Sebastian, who was born in Mexico and speaks fluent Spanish and English, has spent the past 12 years infiltrating cartels and criminal trafficking operations. To date, he’s helped save more than 200 women and children with his team at New Hope Foundation International, an anti-human trafficking nonprofit based in Las Vegas.
Unlike other anti-human trafficking nonprofits, their group has a different style of combatting human trafficking, he said, and they’re one of few that get called in by government agencies to help infiltrate criminal operations and provide safety mechanisms to survivors and also train law enforcement on the inner workings of cartels.
For all practical purposes, Sebastian is an unpaid confidential informant who works with law enforcement, anti-trafficking task forces and federal agencies to rescue victims and provide vital intelligence to authorities both in the United State and Mexico. In addition, he helps some agencies that have limited budgets by spending weeks or months undercover, act quickly and provide survivors with aftercare.
Sebastian often partners up with his wife, both in their mid-50s, who shares his passion for saving victims. They have full-time jobs and do this work on the side, mostly relying on donations through his nonprofit.
There’s much about his tactics and operations that he can’t discuss, but said he’s compelled to do media interviews because he wants to educate the public while letting victims know his group is out to help them while also keeping predators on their toes.
It’s dangerous work, and he’s been threatened many times. But once you see what’s happening, he said, it’s impossible to walk away.
South Of The Border
Sebastian is particularly drawn to helping children, which makes this recent case so hard on him. He knows firsthand what these children are going through as a survivor of sexual assault.
He was abused by neighborhood men when he was a small boy living in Mexico. His mother tried to turn them in, but the police did nothing, prompting the family to immigrate to California to live with her brother.
Sebastian managed to suppress the memories of violence until he was 37 years old, when he started having flashbacks. As part as his own healing, he joined a nonprofit in Mexico that helped immigrants who were being assaulted and kidnapped. From there, he began working as a liaison for an international human rights organization and his network continued to grow.
He started by providing intelligence for the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations about Americans who were going to Mexico for the purpose of abusing minors and other illicit activities. Over the years, he’s managed to build up a solid network among government officials, military, Christian missionaries, law enforcement, human rights groups and other nonprofits both in the U.S. and Mexico.
These days, most of his work south of the border is done remotely because it’s gotten too dangerous for him. He said there have been a couple attempts to kidnap him. Corruption within the Mexican federal government and being targeted by cartels has also made the work too risky.
“If I get picked up, they’ll eventually torture me for a couple of days to get as much information as possible from me, and then kill me,” he said of the cartels.
He now focuses his rescue efforts and intelligence gathering in the United States and has worked with law enforcement on operations in Iowa, Nevada, California, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Ohio, Kentucky and elsewhere.
He hasn’t done any work in Wyoming yet, he said, but two years ago, he was part of an operation in Utah, where they helped rescue Mexican migrant women who were being trafficked in Mexican restaurants and bars in the Salt Lake City area.
Cartels and trafficking operations are everywhere, he said, and no state is immune to the dangers.
Trafficking Everywhere, Including Wyoming
Polaris, an anti-human trafficking nonprofit that operates a national hotline for trafficking victims, fielded nearly 43,000 calls from victims who were likely being trafficked between January 2020 and August 2022, according to its latest 2023 report.
The bulk of these, 27,370, were sex trafficking victims with an additional 9,735 likely being exploited by employers. About 1,900 more were likely exploited for both sex and labor with an additional roughly 4,000 victims being exploited in unknown or other forms of trafficking.
Calls and messages to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, a national hotline that fields calls and links survivors with local resources, recorded 25 calls or web chats with eight victims identified in Wyoming in 2023, according to their website.
Of those six involved sex trafficking and two labor-related trafficking. In terms of the demographics of callers, nine came from females and three from males with an additional three identifying as “other” citizenship.
Arrest figures provided by the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation confirm that both labor and sex trafficking are occurring in Wyoming.
In 2024, there were 17 reported human trafficking commercial sex acts and two involuntary servitudes, which is defined by state statute as obtaining a person through recruitment, harboring, transportation, or provision and subjected that individual by force, fraud or coercion into involuntary servitude, debt bondage or slavery.
No additional information about the nature of the crimes or where they took place was available, according to DCI Commander Ryan Cox, nor does the agency delineate if the crimes involved cartels. Additionally, he cautioned these numbers are fluid as some of the cases are still being vetted to ensure accurate reporting.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security isn’t aware of any cartel-related trafficking investigations in Wyoming at this time, according to Steve Kotecki, public affairs officer with HSI in Denver that oversees operations in Wyoming.
He said though the agency has been involved in sex trafficking operations in the past, including assisting in an investigation at a Rock Springs massage parlor suspected of sex trafficking in November 2023, he isn’t aware of any current investigations in the state at this time not that it doesn't or hasn't occurred in the past.
Home-Grown Trafficking
Joe Scaramucci, an expert in anti-human trafficking circles, said much of the sex trafficking he’s seen in Wyoming is homegrown.
This includes drug-addicted parents selling their children, and “Romeo,” or boyfriend pimps, who exploit female victims by initially pretending to be their boyfriends before trafficking them through some means of coercion, whether it be drugs or threats of violence to them or their children.
Scaramucci, formerly of the McLennan County Sheriff’s County Office where he still serves as a reserve, serves as the director of law enforcement engagement for the anti-trafficking nonprofit, Skull Games. He’s trained law enforcement in most U.S. states as well as eight countries and has worked as a task force officer with Homeland Security.
He’s also led many law enforcement trainings and stings in Wyoming, including one in Sweetwater County in 2021 with the Sheridan-based anti-human trafficking nonprofit, Uprising, that yielded the arrest of four men, including a former state legislator.
He’s never worked with Sebastian but told Cowboy State Daily that he’s met him at an anti-human trafficking training in the past.
Outside Wyoming
Sebastian agreed that much of the sex trafficking in this country is homegrown but said that most of the cartel-affiliated trafficking operations in this country start at the southern border when migrants pay cartels and coyotes upwards of $15,000 dollars in some cases to illegally cross.
Sometimes the women and children are forced or tricked into paying them off through sex trafficking or by unscrupulous employers who traffic victims by paying them pennies on the dollar to work grueling hours while providing squalid living conditions.
The bar is always moving on how much they owe, he said, so it’s very difficult for them to escape once they become entrapped. The cartels also target victims’ family members in their home country, which makes it even harder to escape.
In some cases, freeing a victim requires also getting their family to safety, which is one area where Sebastian and his team are a big help.
Though cartels are likely everywhere in this country, Sebastian said most of their operations exist in large U.S. cities or in hubs where major interstates connect. In his practice, he sees a lot of the trafficking occurring in Asian massage parlors and Mexican restaurants and bars, where he spends a lot of time chatting up staff and blending in to watch for signs of illicit activity.
He declined to provide details of his tactics or approach but said that sometimes he poses as a “John,” or buyer, under the pretext of paying to have sex with the girls and women.
That’s the hardest part, he said, because you have to be convincing enough not to raise suspicion without touching the girls or women or flinching.
“I’ve seen things that cannot be unseen and not be unheard, and it’s just horrible,” he said.
Micro-Cells Common
A lot of the exploitation happens with South American women being lured to the United States with promises of a legal job or being groomed by smaller cells or family operations.
In one case, Sebastian helped free women who were being trafficked throughout Mexican bars and restaurants in East Coast cities by a family operating out of Mexico. The family was its own mini criminal operation with the father handling sales while the mother and daughter took care of the logistics of smuggling.
The son’s job, meanwhile, was to find the women, groom them and get them pregnant in Mexico before moving them to America where he sold them into sex trafficking under the threat of killing the baby if she didn’t comply.
“There’s any number of ways to exploit vulnerable people,” Sebastian said.
He cited another small cell he helped bring down in which a Mexican woman was handing off children to traffickers in the U.S. by using her children’s birth certificates and identification to pass off the strangers as her own.
“That cell was ugly,” he said.
In yet another instance, a small micro-operation in a town in Mexico known for running human trafficking operations was busted in New York. Those cells were ultimately shut down in both countries by law enforcement.
It’s everywhere, he said, noting that he’s even seen a van full of women being trafficked to migrant farm workers on their paydays.
The stories go on, most of which end with arrests with many active cases still pending.
In recent years, the mechanisms appear to be changing as Mexican cartels partner with Chinese criminal enterprises who are laundering cartel money. A recent report by NBC News discussed the dominant role of Chinese brokers in both the illegal and legal cannabis trade.
Real Deal
Kevin Metcalf, former federal agent and director of the Human Trafficking Response Unit at the Office of the Oklahoma Attorney General, has worked with Sebastian on several operations. Sebastian had come highly recommended by other federal partners, he said.
In one case, Sebastian helped find and bring home a family with legal documents who were attempting to cross the border into the U.S. when they got kidnapped in Mexico. Within a week, Sebastian located them and brought them safely into the country, Metcalf said.
In another instance, Sebastian helped rescue a 13-year-old girl whose mother’s boyfriend, a Mexican national, took her back to Mexico when she was eight after her mother died to traffic her.
“She endured some terrible, terrible things,” Metcalf said, but Sebastian was able to team up with an NGO to get her back home.
He’s also worked with Sebastian on cases in the U.S.
“Sebastian’s expertise comes in handy because it’s really, really hard to get people who have his skill set and knowledge of human trafficking,” he said. “He has built a network that takes time and is really difficult for people to do.”
YouTube Farmer
The work is grueling, Sebastian admitted, and he and his wife have had to scale back their 24/7 efforts for the sake of their mental health, particularly in this recent case with the trafficked children that continues to plague him until he can locate and rescue them.
He’s not giving up, he said, and knows he’ll find them.
The worst part of the job, both Sebastian and his wife agreed, is making the hard choice of who they can help based on their limited funds and time.
“We obviously can’t help them all,” he said, “and it’s the people you can’t help that haunt you the most.”
He also knows time is not on their side as thousands are being trafficked every day.
Keeping his sanity can be tough, he said, and he finds it relaxing to watch farming and ranching videos on YouTube, especially while out on assignment.
One of his favorites is Our Wyoming Life about a ranching family in Gillette, Wyoming, as well as Just a Few Acres Farm in upstate New York.
“I’m a YouTube farmer,” he joked. “It’s my ritual. It relaxes me at night.”
Sebastian dreams of one day retiring on his own farmstead and maybe even providing a temporary home for survivors.
For now, however, that will have to wait because there’s still many women and children to be rescued.
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
