{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.hydesmith.senate.gov/anti-trafficking-activist-helps-usher-something-beautiful-something-broken", "Anti-Trafficking Activist Helps Usher Something Beautiful From Something Broken", "2026-06-16", "2026", "2026-06", "Republican", "Senate", "MS", "Cindy Hyde-Smith", "H001079", "www.hydesmith.senate.gov", "hydesmith", "https://www.hydesmith.senate.gov/newsroom", "scraper", "Former Mexican legislator Rosi Orozco helps human trafficking survivors put their lives back together.\n\nBy Savannah Hulsey Pointer\n\nAnita was begging on the streets. Her mother had died, leaving the 12-year-old to fend for herself.\n\nWhen her stepsister took her in, it seemed like a lifeline.\n\nInstead, it was a trap. Anita\u2019s life was not her own. Her stepsister forced her into sex work; by the time she was 14, she was answering calls for a sex hotline. Anita\u2019s stepsister then prostituted her out to violent men.\n\nShe was rescued by the kindness of a stranger who saw her tears, snuck her out of a hotel, and got her to a shelter.\n\nToday, Anita studies marketing and works as an activist against human trafficking. She has testified to its evil all over the world, even addressing the United Nations.\n\nRosi Orozco relates the tale sadly but serenely. She has seen scores of similar stories.\n\nBut her words brim with emotion when she says of Anita, \u201cI\u2019m very proud of her.\u201d\n\nOrozco is a human rights activist and former Mexican congresswoman whose work for trafficking victims spans two decades. Working to give a voice to victims, Orozco has interviewed more than 170 people affected by this violent crime.\n\nShe has worked on numerous government projects to push back against the industry, including powerful anti-trafficking legislation. Through advocacy and shelter work, she has helped hundreds of girls to rebuild their lives after being trafficked. Retired from her role as legislator, nonetheless she continues to advocate and speak out against human trafficking.\n\n\u2018Dirty Money\u2019\n\nAfter a decade working with victims of domestic abuse, in 2005 Orozco turned her efforts to fighting human trafficking. In 2007, she opened her first shelter, a safe house in Mexico City known as Camino a Casa.\n\nOrozco describes human trafficking as a multi-million-dollar \u201cdirty money\u201d industry. She is particularly concerned about the smuggling of children across the U.S.\u2013Mexico border.\n\nIn 2023, Orozco traveled to the United States\u2013Mexico border with Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tn.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) and Katie Britt (R-Ala.). The women saw that smugglers\u2014also known as coyotes\u2014were bringing children into the United States, and that law enforcement appeared helpless to do anything about it.\n\n\u201cThey were crossing with coyotes, children without any parents, and the police and the guards and the Border Patrol couldn\u2019t do anything because there was no control at all in the borders,\u201d Orozco said in an interview with EpochTV\u2019s \u201cAmerican Thought Leaders\u201d last month.\n\nDuring that time, the Biden administration directed Border Patrol agents to catch and quickly release large groups of illegal immigrants, which meant that trafficking often went undetected.\n\nChildren have been used by smugglers, who \u201crent\u201d them to adults crossing the border, so they are processed as a \u201cfamily\u201d and receive expedited processing by Border Patrol and released into the country. An estimated 60 percent of children who cross the border alone or with smugglers are forced into child pornography or drug trafficking, according to a 2022 report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation.\n\nChildren brought to the United States are often seen as simply passengers of migrants who come to America for a better life, but Oroczo described a very different situation. In many cases, she said\u2014possibly hundreds of thousands of cases\u2014there are families in Mexico who are fervently hoping their children are brought home.\n\n\u201cWhen you see the pain of the families who [have] lost their children, and then you see the border \u2026 they are suffering,\u201d Oroczo said.\n\n\u201cThey are suffering either forced labor or sexual exploitation, and that\u2019s really a nightmare that you cannot imagine.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are expecting the children to come back,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cWhen I have talked to the mothers whose [daughters have] disappeared, they said, \u2018I sleep without wanting to sleep; I eat without being [hungry], and I live without life. Because to see the empty chair, to see the empty bed every day \u2026\u201d\n\nParents will spend all the money they have to try to find their children, she said.\n\nThe problem isn\u2019t limited to Mexico. Statistics from the United Nations\u2019 International Labour Organization indicate that almost 30 million people are enslaved worldwide. And Oroczo believes that the problem might be much bigger than that, due to a lack of reporting. [source]\n\nMany minors are lured to foreign destinations by criminal organizations and then trapped in forced labor, drug dealing, or prostitution, Orozco said.\n\nA Personal Fight\n\nThose who lead the fight to stop human trafficking are often people for whom the effort is intensely personal, Orozco said.\n\nOne activist\u2019s child was gone for 17 days and then recovered. Another\u2019s daughter was burned to death; she now heads a non-governmental organization that has helped dozens of people touched by trafficking.\n\nHuman traffickers prey on the very vulnerable, she said.\n\nOrozco told the story of a mother who didn\u2019t even have a phone to make calls to look for her missing daughter, and couldn\u2019t afford to travel to look for her. After her child\u2019s disappearance, she had just enough money to print out 12 photos of her daughter.\n\n\u201cPeople who take advantage of the vulnerability of all these poor families \u2026 are the most disgusting creatures in the world,\u201d Oroczo said.\n\nCriminal organizations use violence to control their victims, Orozco said. One means of control is to force them to commit violence against others. \u201cThey will be forced to kill somebody,\u201d she recounted.\n\nThe horrific practice leaves the young killers robot-like, without their identity and without their humanity, she said.\n\nHowever, supply and demand dictate that the entire industry rides on the back of the consumers, and Oroczo blames them equally: \u201cSomebody that is watching porn \u2026 or having sex with children, it really is not only hurting that child, but the whole family [that] is waiting for that child to come back home.\u201d\n\nOrozco recounted one case that started with an ad targeting young girls that promised good pay for work in the tourism industry. One of the victims was 14 years old. Along with her 15 and 17-year-old friends, she was captured because she was vulnerable, Orozco said. Traffickers knew that the girls\u2019 families would not protect them.\n\nAuthorities in Mexico and the United States work to rescue minors who have been trafficked, but the work is dangerous. Those who work in shelters to aid human trafficking victims also put themselves in danger. Children who have been trained to deal drugs or sell their bodies for profit are valuable to cartels and mafias and these criminal groups won\u2019t let their victims go without a fight.\n\nWorking Through Laws\n\nCorruption within governments, such as the Mexican government, has also contributed to the issue. While there are strong anti-trafficking laws in several states, in order to cope with the problem, those states must enforce the laws, which they don\u2019t always do.\n\nSome Mexican states are applying the country\u2019s anti-trafficking laws, Orozco said, resulting in the rescue of some victims. But many more have disappeared\u2014disappearances in Mexico have surged during the past decade, with some 130,000 people officially registered as missing.\n\nWhen the opportunity arose for Oroczo to run for Mexico\u2019s congress, she campaigned by investing everything in a program against trafficking, making it her only issue. Although the odds were against her, she won her seat in 2009, without being affiliated with any party.\n\nDuring her time in office, she served as president of the legislature\u2019s Special Commission for the Fight Against Human Trafficking. She also garnered the unanimous support of Mexico\u2019s congress to pass the country\u2019s law against trafficking.\n\nMexico\u2019s law focuses first on the victim, Orozco said. Under the law, she said, a trafficker will go to jail if prosecutors can prove he was earning money from the exploitation of his victims. But, if a victim comes forward to authorities with details of how he or she was exploited, violently coerced or deceived, \u201cthen the penalties will go much higher.\u201d\n\nAfter leaving congress in 2012, Orozco became a full-time activist, dedicated to protecting victims of trafficking and pushing for stronger laws. She\u2019s president of the United Against Human Trafficking Commission, a non profit dedicated to abolishing human trafficking and helping victims. She has received numerous awards for her work.\n\nFilling the Broken Pieces\n\nSurvivors like Anita who successfully rebuild their lives are much like broken pottery repaired by \u201ckintsugi\u201d, the former legislator said.\n\nMasters of kintsugi, a Japanese art, repair shattered pottery with gold. The result is no longer broken, but more beautiful than before.\n\n\u201cThey bring them together with gold, and that\u2019s the way they have to fill those broken pieces in their lives,\u201d she said.\n\nOroczo believes faith in God also plays a huge role in recovery for many trafficking survivors.\n\n\u201cWhen these girls find that they can restore their life, they can have a blank page, they can have these pieces together thanks to God, because in these shelters there is something very important, that is faith. And the girls become whole when they find that God created with a purpose.\u201d\n\nWhile faith is by no means a requirement, according to the activist, those who work with victims of trafficking try to be an example of love and to show their faith to those who are recovering from harm.\n\n\u201cWe really believe Jesus is the one who gave their life for them \u2026 and that they can be restored as he resurrected,\u201d Oroczo said.\n\n\u201cThey can be resurrecting their lives for a better life, for a victorious life.\u201d\n\nThere is a profound need for support, for shelter and resources for victims, the former lawmaker said. \u201cWe need more people that [do] not turn their faces to the side and decide to go to this fight to help the children here in the United States,\u201d she said.", 1, "2026-07-09T08:24:13Z", "2026-07-09T08:26:05Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.hydesmith.senate.gov/anti-trafficking-activist-helps-usher-something-beautiful-something-broken"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 3.6174680572003126, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}