Video: Human Trafficking Can Happen Anywhere

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COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) — Over 400- thousand kids are trafficked each year in the United States.

That’s a number Mississippi leaders are trying to lower.

Governor Bryant started a Human Trafficking Task Force late last year, one member is Drake Bassett, president of Palmer Home.

Bassett says the task force is exploring resources that could help lower human trafficking cases, mobilizing people who can make the state safer, while making sure the public is educated on the issue.

“Children down the street from you, there is a chance they are being trafficked,” says Bassett.

Drake Bassett with Palmer home wants people to know, human trafficking is an issue that could be closer than you think.

Since joining the governor’s task force, he’s found some numbers that might surprise Mississippians.

” With in a 3 or 4 county radius 93 children who are in the process of being trafficked or who had been trafficked,” says Bassett.

He explains exactly what we are dealing with.

” Trafficking is the illegal use of human beings, it’s the modern form of slavery,” says Bassett.

And it’s not just about selling sex.

” Labor, which is what we think of when we think of traditional slavery, there’s also, sadly in other parts of the world, the harvesting of human organs,” says Bassett.

and the problem is growing.
“Trafficking has now exceeded the sale of illegal arms globally and it is now on the cusp of bypassing illegal drugs,” says Bassett.

Bassett says the problem won’t change overnight,but he says awareness is the first step to a solution.

Palmer Home has and will continue special training to help victims of human trafficking.

Bassett says the task force will soon start an aggressive social media campaign to get the word out about the problem.