Operation Toussaint: Operation Underground Railroad and the Fight to End Modern Day Slavery

- We have a story that we love to talk about,

a young boy on a beach

who's throwing starfish into the ocean,

older man approaches the young boy

and says, boy what are you doing?

He says, tide is low, the sun is high

and if I don't get them all back into the ocean

they're gonna shrivel up and die.

The man points to the boy and says,

look down the beach,

look down the shoreline,

there's millions of 'em or thousands of 'em.

There's no way that you can get them all back.

Do you think you can really make a difference?

The young boy thinks for a moment

then just starts tossing starfish

back into the ocean.

Turns to the older gentleman and says,

I don't know, but I know I just

made a difference for that one.

Yeah it's right here you guys,

right here, okay.

Okay ready?

Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!

This is on my baby.

- Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen,

thank you.

Thank you, good morning.

It's great to see this many of you out.

Thank you each and every one of you

who came out today

to support Utah's efforts in the fight

against this horrible, evil institution

that we call human trafficking.

With over 40 million

modern day slaves world wide,

thousands of them throughout the United States.

And many of you have known about

this issue and have been fighting

against it and working here for years.

Some even decades.

This is an institution that's been around

since the beginning of time.

But it's really only now that the mainstream,

that the public is starting to gain awareness

and so, a little over four years ago

a dear friend of mine who was a superstar

in the law enforcement community,

who was a specialized agent

with a very special set of skills

left his law enforcement career,

everything that he knew,

his pension, his security,

to start a non-profit called

Operation Underground Railroad.

They've done jumps everywhere throughout

the world, rescued kids,

and then helped them get to a safe place

with their aftercare programs.

Tim Ballard, are you here?

Can you come on up so we can

recognize you and Operation Underground Railroad?

I'll be very brief.

To invoke history, in 1791 when

the Haitian population rose up

and destroyed slavery in their country

that was led by Toussaint L'Ouverture

and then the abolitionists

in America were watching.

Frederick Douglass was watching

and used that inspiration

and when slavery was finally eradicated legally,

because it has not been eradicated in actuality,

Frederick Douglass said, let us not forget

the sons and daughters of Haiti

who are the true pioneer abolitionists

of the 19th century.

We'll turn the rest over to God

and pray for us all as we take our flights

in the 24, 48 hours

and execute this operation

and I am certain we will have success.

Thank you so much.

Well, I think we should do two arrest teams.

I think we should do two arrest teams

and pick 'em up as simultaneously as possible.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome.

We're here to discuss preparations

for what we are so excited for.

It's a day that we've waiting a long time for

and we want to thank my colleague,

Attorney General Ocnam who is here with

his team and then our friends at the DCPG,

the Judicial Police for Haiti.

Our philosophy is, it doesn't matter

what country the kids belong to or were born in,

they're all our kids and we want

to protect all of them.

But sometimes people in our own country ask us,

why are you going to Haiti?

Why does OUR or why would the Attorney General

spend time in another country, we need you here.

And our response is, on global crimes

like human trafficking,

we can't pretend that it just happens

in the United States so we work on it

here domestically so that we can protect

our friends and allies and also protect ourselves

so it never comes in

to the United States borders.

The U.S. creates the demand.

The highest producer and consumer

of child pornography

is right here in the United States.

So we know that it's our countrymen

that are causing this.

And because we look like

those evil countrymen of ours

we can get access quickly to the dark,

to the evil and so the police ask,

do you have operators who can go undercover,

into the belly of the beast,

into the darkest places and find these kids?

And I said, yes we do.

Something happened to me once.

This is after I'd quit the government

and I was already with

Operation Underground Railroad

and I was about to go into this compound

in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

It was a trafficking center.

It looked like an orphanage from outside.

It had orphanage on the wall.

So the police asked us to go in undercover

like we're going to go buy kids

and I remember sitting outside the gate

and I always fight with this, you know.

See, the problem with me is I have seven kids

so any kid that we're looking to save,

the minute I see that kid,

oh, he's six, I got a six year old.

Oh, he's ten, I got a ten year old.

And so it's so easy for my mind

just to put, basically,

superimpose my kid's face, my child's face,

on this victim's face.

And I'd fight and I'd fight and I'd fight it.

And that's how I would move on

because of those first couple of experiences

that just almost destroyed me.

But as I was standing outside the orphanage

something happened, I looked in

and I saw 28 kids

and that was more than I'd ever seen.

And it happened again.

Oh my gosh, there's Blaine, there's Jimmy,

there's Sam, you know, all my kids are here.

And I remember being outside that place

and I thought, I'm not going to do it.

I'm going to try to embrace this.

I've got to buy a kid.

These people think we're here to buy kids

and they made it very clear

within the first five minutes,

you know we don't adopt kids, right?

You know we sell kids.

I'm like, oh, of course yeah!

That's why we're here, you know?

And I see this little boy walk around

from this dark out building.

He walks into the yard of this place,

this dirty place,

it's stinky, it smells like urine and feces

and it was just horrible

and I went up to this kid and picked him up.

And he was my kid.

I saw my kid and he became my kid.

So I'm holding him and my partner

is negotiating with the bad guys about the price

and oh, I think you guys want that one, okay.

And these horrible people are trying to,

they're telling us tips on

how to evade the police

and how they've done this before,

how to get them out of the country.

So I pick the kid up and I want to

go into the dark out buildings

that are around this compound

but I don't want to look like

I'm being overly curious.

So I'm kind of, I have kids

so I know how to communicate with kids

so I get him to point

in the room as if he's going to show me something

and I look over at the bad guys

and I can tell they're like,

oh, he's wants to show that guy whatever.

So it worked, so I got in there

and it just got stinkier and darker

and as I kind of walked into