Mexico ramps up fight against child porn
EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The Mexican government is reporting the August arrests of four people on human trafficking charges related to the production and distribution of child pornography.
The arrests in Acapulco, Tijuana and Guanajuato and the rescue of two underage victims are part of a 2-year-old initiative by the Mexican National Guard called Operación Salvación (Operation Salvation). The initiative has led to the arrest of 103 individuals who allegedly produced, stored and distributed images of child exploitation of minors. It has also led to the rescue of 86 exploited minors, according to the Mexican government.
“The objective is to detect criminal networks, identify the sex offenders that make this modern form of slavery possible, detain them and rescue the victims of these crimes,” the National Guard said said in a statement.
The investigations that led to the latest four arrests stemmed from tips received by the Virginia-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The U.S. nonprofit receives millions of reports of suspected child sexual exploitation a year. Ninety-three percent of those tips from technology companies and individuals involve suspected content originating outside of the United States.
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“We work with a lot of countries, not just Mexico (and) send reports to law enforcement (who) decide which ones to investigate,” NCMEC told Border Report in an email.
Of the 32 million reports of possible child sexual abuse material NCMEC received in 2022, some 1.56 million involved the United States, and 815,792 Mexico. That places Mexico in seventh place worldwide, behind places like Bangladesh and India, Indonesia and the Philippines. You can see the complete list here.
The National Guard said double-digit yearly increases in child porn reports received from its international partners since 2019 led to the start of Operación Salvación in 2021. The Mexican Congress in the last decade also voted to increase penalties for human trafficking, the umbrella federal statute that includes child porn offenses.
“The National Guard reaffirms its cooperation with international partners and state attorney general offices to conduct investigations to combat these types of crimes that affect our society,” the guard’s statement said.
NCMEC not only collaborates with foreign governments to stop the sexual exploitation of children but also international agencies like UNICEF (the United Nations’ children’s agency), the Internet Watch Foundation and ECPAT (End Child Prostitution in Asia), and others.
“On the internet, crimes against children have no borders,” said NCMEC’s Chief Legal Officer Yiota Souras in the nonprofit’s “Borderless” 2022 report. “Offenders sexually exploit children in the United States and around the world from behind the keyboard of their laptop.”
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