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Let My People Go Ministries Combats Human Trafficking This January and 365 Days of The Year · OneLegUpAlex Media

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Here's your host, Alex Garren. Well, welcome inside to the Alex Garrett
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podcast Network. And with me right now is someone who once again I met
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through the National Publicity Summit Rally Saddler. Raleigh. Thanks for joining me today,
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Alex, Thanks for having me now. You are part of an organization
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that empowers local churches to fight human trafficking, Let My People Go. But
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first I gotta say a shout out to MJ Kromfel because she's our mutual connection.
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How about that? Yeah, she is. Raleigh. You are the
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founder and executive director of Let My People Go. Tell us about your ministry
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work and this work to combat human trafficking, and especially because it is Human
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Trafficking Awareness Month. Yeah, it's towards the end of the month. I
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think that people really understand, Wow, we're really focusing on human trafficking.
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Maybe it's a big deal, Maybe it's a problem. And isn't this migrant
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crisis a big part of the admission now to stop human trafficking. I would
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define human trafficking as the exploitation of vulnerability for the commercial gain. So whether
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it's for sex, labor, or domestic servitude, it's someone with power exploiting
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someone with a little less and they don't have to have all that much power
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to exploit someone, just enough to have a leverage. And so when you
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have a situation like the migrant crisis, you have these people who are coming
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into a new country where they may not have networks, or at least not
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networks that are the most healthy for them. And then many of them are
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being sent from one place to another, many arriving in New York City where
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there is not infrastructure to care for them like the NYPD and local nonprofits and
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the city government are doing the best that they can, but at the end
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of the day, you have a ton of vulnerable people in a city where
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they're demand for exploitation and demand for sexual exploitation. And for me, it
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just seems like a cocktail that will ultimately end up in the trafficking of a
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lot of people who came to the country looking for hope, only to find
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something different through Let My People Go. It sounds like a beautiful effort I'm
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partnering with, you know, churches locally and nationally, But is it heartbreaking
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as well? Oh yeah, I mean it's very difficult, especially when this
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is the world that you live in and you're consistently talking about exploitation or seeing
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people who have been hurt in churches, or people who've been trafficked by people
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that were family members. And I think that's what drives me to see churches
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become safe places for vulnerable people, so that the church will look at their
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vulnerable neighbor, regardless if their neighbors a new immigrant, or if their neighbor
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is someone who is living with mental illness or someone who's been formally incarcerated,
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that they would look at this person as their neighbor and say, Okay,
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how can we connect with this person, How can we include them in what
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we're doing in the community, How can we listen to them and see what
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they're seeing in the community. Because I think we all need each other and
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I want to see churches really grasp that the vulnerable people in their community are
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people that they can care for. And I think and when they care for
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them in that way, they're going to fight trafficking ralely. A big word
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that gets thrown around is the word smuggling. And I'll tell you I get
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frustrated when I see, like the Washington Post, Net or other outlets say
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Okay, well here's the issue, but they don't want to address it.
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They just stated I mean, isn't that frustrating to you when you see stories
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on that, But they don't do anything else. They just write about it.
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Is that a good start? Though? Well, you know, I
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think with smuggling, smuggling and human trafficking will always be a little different.
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Though smuggling to turn into human trafficking. Like if you go to the Homeland
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Securities website when they talk about human trafficking, they always have a caveat where
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they say human smuggling and human trafficking are going to look differently because at the
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end of the day, with with trafficking, there's an expected exploitation of some
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sort. With smuggling, there could just be moving someone even though it's exploitative.
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You know, coyotes can often be very exploitive of you know, well
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you were only supposed to pay five thousand, but now we want thirty thousand.
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There's that, But there's the peace with trafficking where you're ultimately trafficked for
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labor, sex or domestic servitude. Is there any static oh, is there
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any stats you could tell us, by the way, about these traffickers that
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they got what they go through and how many go through this every year?
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Yeah, so around the world there as many as fifty million people who are
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held in what amounts to modern day slavery. I mean, numbers go from
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twenty four million to one hundred and fifty million. It's or to fifty million.
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Rather it's one hundred and fifty million dollar industry. So the amount of
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money that comes from it is staggering. And the majority of human trafficking takes
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the form of forced labor, people working in fields, or people forced into
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marriage or things like that. But the majority of the money comes from sex
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trafficking. And I know it can be as unfortunately, as young as thirteen
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fourteen. I mean they can get pretty young and pretty ugly, can it.
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Absolutely? And I think the key word here is vulnerability, because anyone
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can be vulnerable, and oftentimes traffickers are targeting people who are vulnerable, and
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they might be children, they might be women. Oftentimes they can be someone
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from another culture where they don't have the networks or the close family units to
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protect them. And yeah, it can get really messy real quick because most
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traffickers are masters that exploiting that vulnerability. They're like sharks in the water,
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you know, a shark sense of blood. He knows what's to do,
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and that's exactly how a trafficker works. Rollie, do you consider yourself a
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psychologist as well when it comes to this, because there's a lot of psychological
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torture and physical that go on with the for the traffickers or aren't there?
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Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm not a psychologist by trade, but it's one
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of those things that you have to be aware of because most of the people
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their chains aren't physical, their chains are emotional, they're psychological. There's trauma
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bonds that hold people to their exploiters. They've experienced an intense experience and they're
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kind of stuck, and then their trafficker off the manipulates that. Not only
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that, they make it make it threatening to even open up. So,
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how how do you guys get get these girls and all kinds of people traffick?
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How do you get them to open up if you will, and just
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really either tell their story or help them get out of their situation. You
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know, I once heard a pastors say that relationships move at the speed of
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trust, and I think that's really what's at play. Here is a lot
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of people want to fight human trafficking as long as it's fast, as long
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as it as long as it moves along, as long as they can get
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people from point A to point B. So there's definitely a rise in the
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paramilitary approach to ending trafficking because you know, at that point you get to
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fil macho, you get to feel like you're doing something, and there is
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a time and place for that, especially within certain cultures. That said,
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I think the harder work and the more necessary work is the work that anyone
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in any community can do, and that's building relationships with people who are experiencing
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community. It's finding the single parents, it's finding the people who have just
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exited the penal system and talking to them, getting to know them, being
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a safe person for them taking that risk, because it's those people that traffickers
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target. Traffickers aren't looking, like I've said a couple of times, traffickers
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aren't looking for people who have strong, tight knit families. They're they're looking
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for the people on the fringe. They're looking for the people who are in
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a sense vulnerable but also villainized by the larger community. Which is why when
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you bring up migrants. That makes perfect sense because for many they're looking at
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this migrant crisis and they're blaming the migrants, and in some ways, you
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know, they might be able to build a case in some way, but
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I think what people can fail to do is see the inherent vulnerability that someone
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who's coming to this country with nothing has. And so some have the various
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means, I'm sure probably, but more often than not, you're seeing vulnerable
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people who are just trying to find a new life, and traffickers exploit that.
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Does let my people go or do you personally do what they would call
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rescue missions or how does that work? No, So when we work with
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churches, our goal is primarily to help that church recognize and respond to their
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neighbors who traffickers would normally target. And so it's finding the populations in your
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community that could be susceptible and intentionally building bridges into those populations to where you're
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getting to know them. You're making your church a safe place for them so
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that they can feel like they can be part of this spiritual family. Do
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you do you find that these women, these kids, even and others who
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are trafficked to come to God or already have this believe in God that they
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know he can get them out of this as well. Yeah, I think
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it's interesting that you have. Like I had someone from Homeland Security call me
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once and he said, Hey, do you know any churches, because what
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we're finding is we're rescuing people and that's great, but a lot of the
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people who are being rescued, they're missing that component. They they want a
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faith based organization that they can be part of. They want to be part
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of a faith based community because they know that that was also something that was
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manipulated. See traffic don't just manipulate people emotionally and physically and psychologically, but
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they also spiritually abuse people as well, and they put theirselves in the place
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of God for that person and make that person fully dependent on them. And
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so finding holistic healing often looks like appealing to the spiritual side as well.
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Well. This is I feel like this is great work that you guys are
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doing now, Raleigh. Any any success stories you could tell us while we
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have you here today to start off human traveling awareness. Months shortly after Let
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My People Go launched, we were still in the prototype phase and I had
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several pastors that I was working with from across denominational lines, from across even
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ethnic and age based lines. I really wanted to get my finger on the
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pulse of what was happening in the city of New York. And I'll never
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forget. A pastor called me and he said, hey, Rob, I
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don't know what to do. And I said, okay, let's talk about
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it. And he said, we were giving out coats in queens. They
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were in Ridgewood. Queens were given out quotes her coats, and a young
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woman came to me and she was from Central Asia. She spoke broken English
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and I couldn't really communicate with her much, and she was able to communicate
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that she had gotten a job at a place right next to the church,
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which happened to be a massage parlor. Now, not every massage parlor is
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an illicit massage parlor. But a couple of months later, he gets a
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text from some people in the church saying, hey, on our community Facebook
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page for Ridgewood, someone posted a brothel. He clicks the link and he
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sees the face of the girl to whom he gave a coat in a provocative
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pose. And he's calling me. He's like, what do I do,
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and I said, at this point, you reach out to your local precinct
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and you just start up a conversation. And the police chief was so encouraged
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that a community leader just in the community that he said, you know what,
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We're gonna pull out all the stops. We're going to park a car
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in front of this place, a police car. He's like, and if
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it's not illicit, it shouldn't bother their business, but if it is,
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that should disrupt some things. And then they just kept this relationship going.
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And because of one girl who met one pastor who addressed one police captain about
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one brothel, twenty eight illicit massage parlors were shut down in Ridgewood, Queens.
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And I'll never forget hearing. I remember I was walking into a meeting
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and someone said, hey, you do something about human trafficking, right,
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And I'm like yeah, and they're like, Man, I lived at Richward,
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Queens and I was in a coffee shop and this guy was talking to
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this other guy pretty loudly. He said, I can't buy sex and rigwood
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anymore because they closed all the places down. And it blew my mind that
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all it took was one person to show interest, and it led to really
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a change in the neighborhood, you know, the connectingness between pre saincts and
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between state lines. I mean, I feel like, let my people go,
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is it's starting to cross state lines, like even the communications between police
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departments. Do you've notice this is stretching beyond just New York now? Oh?
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Absolutely, yeah, it's there has to be a lot of collaboration,
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especially with different law enforcement agencies and nonprofits and so. As it is as
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it is human Trafficking Awareness months, I think it's very important for the listener
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to know that there is a human trafficking hot line number that you can call.
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And you can call this number to learn more about human trafficking. But
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you can also call this number if you have actionable intelligence, Like if you've
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seen something and you're a little nervous about it, you got that out,
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you're you're a little like I don't I don't like this. You can call
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one eight eight eight three seven three seven eight eight eight. How do you
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protect those that report and isn't an anonymous I mean, because I feel like
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all of a sudden, you'll have you'll have you know, those after you
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for reporting them, right, Yeah, Yeah, it's anonymous. And what
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they'll do is there a hotline that will ultimately get They'll right up a case
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and they'll get a they'll get enough to be able to send that to either
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Homeland Security, FBI, local law enforcement, state law enforcement, and so
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many of them kind of work with the hotline and that keeps a good connectivity
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and collaboration on discs. Rollie, this is this is so great. I
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gotta ask you this though, because it's the digital age, right, and
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so does that make this work challenging easier? What do you think about the
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digital side of this trafficking crisis we're in. Yeah, I mean every week
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a new app drops, and if you're an exploiter, you're consistently thinking how
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can I leverage this new technology? Like people have been exploited through Snapchat,
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Instagram, TikTok, I mean only fans like people like just because someone's smiling
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on the other side of the screen doesn't mean they want to be there.
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And so really, yeah, it's I think it's kind of coming into this
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in a way that's not Naives, where we don't look for a demon behind
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every bush, but we look at technology as the technology may not be evil,
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but there could be people with horrible intentions who want to leverage that technology
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for their own game. We've seen a lot of efforts zon quote unquote,
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I guess you'd say by these social media companies, are they doing enough?
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I mean, I feel like, let my people go fills that in person
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void right where or even the digital void where they're not doing enough right well,
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you know, there's so much to do, and it's like, right
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now, we're just hoping that in some ways, like that they would put
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something on porn sites where they were able to say like you have to prove
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you're this age, or that major social media outlets would ultimately do something about
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the pornography that's on their sites. You know, it's yeah, it's people
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don't want to see the connection between trafficking in pornography, but oftentimes pornography is
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used, especially the Internet, Pornography is used to groom the people who are
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trafficked, you know, to show them this is what you're supposed to do,
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this is how you're supposed to do it. But oftentimes people who are
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trafficked end up in pornography. Not everyone's there because of a willing choice.
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Rally isn't this a reason why sex work legalization. And the problem is it's
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become such a judgy thing, right, but it's it's really at the heart
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of it, Hey, you're enabling this other illegal, dangerous stuff to happen
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when you legalize this, right. Yeah, that's I think that's the heart
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of the Nordic model or the partial DCRIM model, where it says we decriminalize
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the people who are in who are doing that, like who are in prostitution,
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who are being prostituted. It's probably always there, and we decriminals them
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so that they're able to get care if they need it. But then we
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criminalize the buyers and the sellers because at that point you're finally addressing demand because
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the traffickers are going to sell and they're making the majority of the money.
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That's what people don't understand, like from a lot of the things that we've
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seen in the movement, and a lot of my friends who are trafficking survivors
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will say, I never saw money exchanged, you know, I wasn't out
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there just getting rich and and so yeah, I think I think it's really
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finding out how we can ultimately hold the buyers and the sellers accountable and I
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think in that way you're able to address it. But when people just kind
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of carte blanche say all right, we're just gonna take away the penalty from
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everything, well, then you're going to have more black market stuff. You're
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gonna have more exploitative stuff, because people aren't gonna want what they can just
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get at the store. They're gonna want the more intense stuff. I feel
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like that's that's how this often works. Somehow, the city's allowed a ring,
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if you will, to form in Rooseveld Avenue and Queens And I still
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don't know how that whole thing formed. But do you guys keep an eye
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when you hear these prostitution rings are happening? All right, we got to
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keep an eye on this to see how we can shut it down and then
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save those that are in the ring. Well, and you think about Roosevelt
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Avenue, I mean that has been building for years. I mean there has
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consistently been almost an organized exploitative presence when it comes to prostitution there. I
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mean I was hearing stories right after I moved there, people being trafficked in
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beds, in the back of in the back of like moving trucks where you
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know, you get a card with some flowers on it and a phone number.
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You call the phone number and they pick you up. I mean I
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was hearing stories like that from law enforcement agencies, and so you have these
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immigrants who are moving to the neighborhood with nothing, and they're doing everything they
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can to figure out their situation, and often mentioned that. You know,
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I just think in the Me Too movement was supposed to stop all of this,
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wasn't it. I think the different movements that have come out in the
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last five years, all of them have been calling attention to things, even
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the human trafficking movement. But the problem is when you call attention to things,
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it sometimes feels like it's getting worse. But I don't know if it
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is getting worse as much as you're just seeing it more clearly now and you're
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realizing that you didn't see it, that you were blind to it the whole
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time. You know, we met about four or five years ago around and
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the growth since five years has to make you feel proud that what you're doing
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is working and dare I say expanding. Well, when you start a nonprofit,
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you're just excited to be there. Five years later, you know,
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it's like as long as like, because I mean, it's it's hard out
22:15
there, and the pandemic was really tough, especially on small, scrappy nonprofits.
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It was very tough. And so surviving that and being able to live
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to fight another day is And I feel like you're great from what we've talked
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about. I feel like you've you've started this because you felt the government wasn't
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doing enough. Am I right on that? Well, No, it was
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more I didn't feel like the church knew how to do anything. If you
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don't know how to respond, you're either going to do the first thing that
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comes to mind, which is always the worst thing. That's the Messiah complex.
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I'm going to fix the problem. I'm going to rescue the girls.
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I'm the hero, or you do nothing because you're overwhelmed. I remember when
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I was in Kentucky. I was a seminarian at the time, and I
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was at a coffee shop and this woman runs out of the alley and says,
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these two people stole her purse. Everyone else left, everyone else ran
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and they chased down the guys, and I just went and got my coffee.
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But then it started to build and I started to feel bad and I
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started to feel shame and I was like, well, I gotta do something.
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What am I going to do? So I jumped in my car and
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I had no plan. I'm like, was I going to hit these guys?
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I don't think so, but but I didn't know. I had no
23:38
plan. And I think when you do that, that's that can be very
23:45
dangerous. And I think you hear about human trafficking and if you don't have
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a plan or an mo o, you're you're gonna end up hurting other people
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and hurting yourself. Well, and it's because it hurts our communities at the
24:00
end of the day, doesn't it. And I know that you mentioned the
24:03
pandemic there were a lot of codes that those facing domestic violence could use for
24:10
the local pizzerias. Are there codes that those who are brave enough to get
24:14
out of this traffick and can use and call their local pizzeri or call their
24:17
local business and say, hey, you know so and so I'm about you
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know this is about to happen. Is there any sort of code system there?
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I'm sure there are. One thing I've noticed that almost in every airport
24:29
you go to in the United States, and honestly, internationally. In some
24:33
cases there are signs in the bathrooms, and you'll find, like in a
24:38
lot of public places where there would be a lot of people, there are
24:42
often signs and bathrooms that say, hey, here are the signs of human
24:47
trafficking. If these things are happening, here's the number you can call.
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And I'm sure nonprofits may have things where their codes, but but I think
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oftentimes it's getting that information out there, getting that human trafficking hotline number out
25:04
there. It's where if someone is ready to get out, they don't want
25:08
to be there, and they're able to take that step of faith, there's
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information for them. And by the way, the website is just just to
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let what our listeners know. Again, our website is LMPG dot org like
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let my people go LMPG dot org. Now you mentioned the super Bowl.
25:32
I know this is a big Super Bowl month, but I'd love to continue
25:34
this throughout the month if you want to come on for updates on how you
25:37
guys have fared during this whole month. And then you know, I always
25:41
believe in continuing the conversation after the awareness month because it always ends at a
25:45
certain point, right, But that's not what this podcast. Are we like
25:48
to continue the conversation. Yeah, that'd be great, all right, Raleigh
25:52
Sadler, thank you so much. And you know, I originally reach out
25:57
to you about the Israeli conflict because we've seen a lot of hostages there.
26:02
I don't know if you want to mention about your thoughts on that personally,
26:03
because you have a lot of thoughts on that as well. And those that
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have been sort of abducted and kidnapped and uh, is that the sort of
26:12
same situation that we see here in America when when those who are traffick at
26:15
kidnapped or is there a difference. I've been trying to figure out this that
26:18
since October seventh. Yeah, oftentimes with human trafficking, it's not necessarily not
26:23
everyone who's traffic is kidnapped, and many people are often groomed, and so
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they're kind of a it's a longer process, and the person will ultimately they'll
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befriend them, they'll offer them things, they'll treat them really wonderfully, and
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then they'll exploit that relationship that they've built because it's way easier to keep someone
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who thinks that they're there by their own choice then to take someone against their
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will. Yeah, it's most people are groomed. And I would say with
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regards to Israeli Palestinian conflict and really any worldwide conflict, when you have a
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conflict of this magnitude, no matter where it is in the world, people's
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vulnerabilities are going to be exploited. And at some point during that process,
27:25
I promise you that there will be traffickers standing ready to exploit those people.
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So if someone loses everything, if someone's family members die, no matter where
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you are, there will be traffickers staying ready to exploit them. And that's
27:45
why Let My People Go stays vigilant. That's why the founder of Let My
27:48
People Go, Raleigh Saddlers, staying vigilin and why he's on the show today
27:52
because he is. He's willing to speak out about this and wanting you to
27:56
let people know about this. And I appreciate you wanting to do that here
27:59
on the show. Oh, thank you for having me. All right,
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that was it. Thank you so much, Rollie. That was perfect. By