Morning Wire - Hiding In Plain Sight: Inside America’s Child-Trafficking Crisis

Episode Date: November 1, 2025

In this episode, we sit down with Derek Benner, the CEO of Our Rescue, the nonprofit behind “Hiding In Plain Sight: America’s Child-Trafficking Epidemic.” The film, which is streaming live now on Daily Wire+, shines a light on the dark reality of child trafficking within the United States. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Today's Sponsors:  ZipRecruiter: Go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter FOR FREE: https://ZipRecruiter.com/WIRE - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy morning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

These predators have a community. They find the children where the children are. These people are trying to talk to my daughter asking for nudes. It was really scary to think that that happens here at home. The worst thing you can do is hide from this issue. There's too little focus on this now in our society, and there needs to be much more. Even the best parents can't compete with what they're allowing their children to view on the internet. It's coming at your kids whether you like it or not.

That was a clip from the trailer of the new film, Hiding, in plain sight, America's child trafficking epidemic, which is streaming now live on Daily Wire Plus. The film exposes the hidden reality of child trafficking within the United States, offering an unflinching look at how exploitation thrives and how everyday people are fighting back. In this episode, we sit down with Derek Binner, the CEO of Our Rescue. That's the nonprofit behind the film that's working to end child trafficking in America. I'm Daily Wire, executive editor John Bickley, with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend. of Morning Wire.

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That's ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Joining us now to discuss the new film, Hiding in Plain Sight, America's Child Trafficking Epidemic, is the CEO of Our Rescue, the nonprofit, which produced the film, Derek Binner. Derek, thanks so much for coming on. Oh, thank you very much for having us. We're excited to be here.

So when people hear the word trafficking, they may not realize how the definition has really changed in today's modern world, but that's what this film is all about. Tell us a little bit about the film and some of the dark things it shines a light on. Yeah, it's really a realistic look into the state of affairs around sex trafficking and child exploitation here in our country in the United States. And I think the stark figure here is the contrast of the issue itself and the lack of knowledge across our country and our communities that it's actually happening here at scale, at a staggering scale. What is the goal, ultimately, of the film, and what kinds of things should viewers expect to see here? Yeah, so viewers are going to see a real-life reality picture of the crisis in America relative to sex trafficking and child exploitation.

They're going to hear real stories from survivors. They're going to hear real stories from parents and loved ones about some of the challenges that they've faced regarding technology and online enticement. you're going to hear from our rescue professionals that are out there working with law enforcement every day, providing the technology, the training. Also, our electronic storage device canines are out there to help the police find the small digital cartridges that contain evidence that perpetrators hide. And they're going to hear from law enforcement. They're going to hear from law enforcement about the challenges. the communities in which they serve and how difficult this job is. It's a very tough conversation, but at our rescue, we feel like we need to help fill that gap

and almost a call to action so that we can start understanding how big of a crisis this is and how we can all pitch in to join the fight. Right. I think a lot of people hear about the trafficking conversation, really coming from the right more than the left. I think many people think this is a political issue or there's some sort of conspiracy angle to it. But what are the realities of the numbers? How big of an issue is this?

So the reality is I come at you and this job after 29 years in federal law enforcement, 16 years of that time at the border, U.S.-Mexico border, where I've seen all types of human crime and crimes of exploitation to include trafficking and smuggling the reality is that this is not a Democrat or Republican issue.

This is not a socioeconomic issue. This isn't all of us issue. All of our communities across the country are experiencing tremendous amounts of child exploitation and sex trafficking. And I've got some interesting numbers to explain kind of the scope of the problem that we're facing. Yeah, I'd love to hear that. how widespread a problem is this? So I give you an example.

In 2024, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received over 20 million suspected child exploitation tips. So that's one year. Contained within that 20 million or 64 million suspected images of child sex abuse material to include videos, photos, and other files. that's a staggering amount of tips and leads that need to go out to law enforcement to be acted upon. So how do victims get ensnared in this? What does the pipeline look like?

So in a lot of cases, let's take sex trafficking, for example, the legal statute calls for force, fraud, and coercion, and we tend to think that people are kidnapped and held in prisons or held in captivity, when in reality, most people are lured into a sex trafficking situation by criminal organizations that groom them over the Internet. It's a very slow, methodical process typically involving more fraud and coercion than force. On the child that's a child that exploitation side, we've seen a 1,300 percent increased in reports of genitive AI child sexual material. That's the new frontier that we're still confronting and exploring and has yet to be determined how big of a problem this will actually be.

What are the most common digital tactics predators use to initiate contact with children on the more mainstream apps. It's primarily over just about any social platform messaging boards, even online gaming has become a massive target for predators to try to engage children in a way to get them to send sexually explicit material or actually even worse, further acts of exploitation by actually meeting in person. I'll give an example. I'll give an example. So online enticement is the category of this. Two hundred percent increased since 200, since 2023. Almost 600,000 incidents reported last year of online enticement across any platform you can imagine. So think social media, think encrypted chat rooms, think messaging forums, and online

gaming. The numbers you're giving are really staggering. Immediately strikes me that there's really no way we have the manpower to look into all of these claims. How is the government, the federal government, local governments, how are they actually handling this amount, this flood of complaints? The tip of the spear and child exploitation are the internet crimes against children task forces located in 61 locations across the country. The job that the men and women of these organizations do is nothing less than heroic. It's one of the worst jobs in law enforcement in terms of the material that they have to deal with every day. The backlogs that they face are staggering.

And I'll give you an example. So in 2024, the federal government spent almost $48 billion with a B in the war on drugs. The budget to fund the internet crimes against children task forces is roughly $32 million with an M. That's $500,000 per task force. And it's crazy that here we are. are, you know, as a nonprofit, providing this equipment, the expensive forensics tools, the expensive software licenses that it takes to bring these predators to justice. And that's what it's going to take.

All of us working together until things change to help fill that gap. So do we have any sense of how many children are involved in this in the United States currently? There's some estimates. The difficulty around the prevalence is, you know, long. enforcement needs to identify and rescue victims from these images. And of course, there's, there's duplicates. In many cases, images that have been out there being traded over and over again by pedophiles. Every time that image gets traded, that child is victimized again. And so we're, we obviously need to pull those down in a global way. I'd also say that the Report Act,

which came into effect in 2024, has really helped the platforms to be more engaged in this and actually report more of the online enticement to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. So we're getting more information that way. The problem is the backlog and the resourcing. And our feeling is this information gap between these numbers and this issue and what's the the general public understands about this very difficult topic to talk about. It's something that we need to fill, and that's why we believe this film is so important for people to see and understand that these are the real stories.

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we're grandi. Trouvee to little other on our oner. You mentioned a little bit

about what your organization does. I'd love you to unpack that a little bit more for us.

So you're providing tools, technology to the federal government to these task force to really help

them track down more of these predators? Yeah, so our rescue is a very what I would say operational

nonprofit where we're engaging with police departments and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces to assess their technology gaps. And we are actually providing grant funding directly to these agencies to purchase the expensive cyber forensics tools that they need to do their job. Now, I'll give you an example. When you're dealing with potential child victims at a search warrant and you have mountains of digital evidence on the scene, these investigators need to be able to analyze that evidence in the moment to make sure that there's no children at risk in the immediate timeframe. And so much of that technology is several hundred thousand dollars a year. And so we're providing that technology to these departments and these internet crimes

against children task force through a program that we call ICAT Connect. You talked about generative AI actually making things worse in terms of creating images. But is AI also helping in terms of some of the technologies you're talking about identifying problems. How is that actually playing out? Yeah, so this is the double-edged sword of technology, right? So law enforcement is leveraging technology at scale to do things faster and better.

Certainly, AI can help process some of the difficult evidence that's hard to look at and can actually make that process go faster. But at the same time, predators and offenders are leveraging the same technology to do more of their work faster. And I'll give you an example. So encryption.

So tackling that issue where offenders hide evidence where they store CSAM can be very difficult to locate. Dark web chat rooms where predators and offenders almost get together and share information about their crimes. they research what law enforcement tactics are being used, and they share this information that's publicly available, almost like a collaboration center for, you know, like the devil's work, you know, workbench. So as in my estimation, based on the funding constraints, I think in a lot of cases, the violators and the predators are leveraging technology at a scale equal to or better than, law enforcement, they don't have to follow the rules. And they're very focused on trying to reach as many potential children as possible. Now, just a few years ago, we were hardly hearing about this at all. And I think Sound of Freedom was probably instrumental in bringing this to the forefront. Are we seeing any concrete movement at the law enforcement level or at the congressional level to

address this? Yeah, I do. I think there, there has been some movement. So I served as the director of HSI under the first Trump administration. They brought a lot of awareness around the trafficking and child exploitation issue. We were able to open the Department of Homeland Security Center to counter human trafficking, which was huge. We were able to, Congress provided extra funding to place victim assistance coordinators and all of our law enforcement offices across the country to specifically help survivors on their journey from the time of a law enforcement action and moving forward to the path of healing. There's a lot of good pending legislation, both at the federal level and at the state level. It's not moving fast enough, though. I think, you know, the speed needs to be a little

more a faster pace. Several states like Texas and New Jersey come to mind in terms of passing some really good trafficking and child protection laws and actually pitching in a little bit to help fund the internet crimes against children. But generally speaking, the biggest gap that I see is the resource gap when it comes to, you know, how do we tell what our priorities are as a country? typically a high priority item equals a high budget appropriation. And I think we need to look at how we adjust that. Until then, we welcome people to come support our rescue because we're going to fill that gap. Well, we appreciate so much the work you're doing.

And we're excited about this film. There's a reason that we want it on our platform. We want to get this message out. And hopefully we do see more momentum and more dollars directed toward this effort. That's such a big priority. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much. That was Derek Benner, CEO of Our Rescue,

talking about the documentary Hiding in Plain site, America's Trafficking Epidemic, streaming live now on Daily Wire Plus. This has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.