(NewsNation) — A man who says he’s rescued 200 sex trafficking victims has a message for the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels: He’s hunting them.
The man, who goes by Sebastian, says he’s an unpaid confidential informant for federal agencies.
Trafficking situations often start with a family south of the border trying to cross into the United States illegally and paying the cartels about $15,000 per person, he said.
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“If the young lady is pretty, woman or child is attractive, and they feel that they could sell that child or traffic that person … they’ll just outright kidnap that person,” Sebastian said.
“And if they are with family members, they will either try to strategically say, ‘Well, she’s going go into a separate car,’” he continued. “And then when they keep the girl, they’ll just tell the family member, ‘You know what? The cops pulled us over. They took her away. Immigration has her.’ And then that’s it. They never hear from her.”
None of the girls make any money, Sebastian said. Some are promised eventual release if they work enough to make $50,000 to $100,000. But those goalposts are always moving, he said.
“A lot of women die,” Sebastian said. “A lot of women are murdered.”
When traffickers are done with a person, they‘ve been known to take them to the outskirts of the city and kill them, he said.
“They knew the faces the names of the Johns, which were politicians, police officers, business owners, and obviously, the names and faces of the traffickers,” Sebastian said.
Sebastian’s services are a race against time and, although the gig doesn’t pay, it does afford him certain protection. That includes a network of intel and support that he said has been life-saving.
One agency warned Sebastian they’d learned his identity had been compromised and to skip the job. As the director of rescue operations at New Hope Foundation International, his work is mostly funded by donations to the nonprofit.
These are the methods he can disclose.
“Once they trust you, they start offering you girls,” Sebastian said.
He befriends traffickers and poses as a so-called John or a client who pays for sexual services.
Reaching the women and never touching them while remaining inconspicuous is a challenge.
“I tell them that I’m diabetic,” he said. “Because we don’t have Viagra, I cannot get an erection. So I don’t want to touch a girl. I don’t want them touching me. So that’s the way we get ourselves, not into bad situations.”
Sometimes, he gifts women and children cellphones.
“They say, ‘Oh, I like your phone.’ (and I say) ‘Oh, yeah, that’s cool. I’m gonna get another one. Would you like to keep this one if I get the new one?’ And then say yeah,” Sebastian said. “It’s a $400 to $600 phone and they’ll get it for free. Little do they know that (through) coordinated efforts with the government, that phone has tools in there to monitor everything.”
Cellphones are often what crack the cases and give the government what it needs to bust trafficking operations.
NewsNation spoke with Kevin Metcalf, a former federal agent and director of the human trafficking response unit at the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office.
According to Metcalf, Sebastian has the trust, resources and network “to do things we can’t.”
“When we tell him, for example, there’s a 13-year-old girl and we don’t know if we can keep her safe, he can reach out and make sure that happens,” Metcalf said. “Even for government officials, we struggle to do things like that.”
Leon Worthen is a former director of operations at Naval Special Warfare. He said he’s worked 12 cases with Sebastian, using him in reconnaissance.
“He is definitely the real deal,” Worthen said. “He has the ability, the fearlessness, the courage and the bravery to put himself in harm’s way when it comes to rescuing a victim of trafficking or abuse, and every single time, the results are amazing.”
What keeps him going? The little boy he was decades ago when no one came to save him.
“When I was a child, I was sexually assaulted multiple times on two different occasions and at that time, nothing was done to help me,” Sebastian said. “It’s hard to speak out. So I know that those kids find it hard to speak out once they fall in that trap.”
