HOW AMERICA WILL ELIMINATE CHILD TRAFFICKING USING THE UNIQUE TOOLS OF Re:PUBLIC.US
By: Juliette M. Engel, MD Program Leader, Our Country Our Children
This will provide the tools that Americans need to create local actions that grow into state, regional and national actions
For twenty years from 1990 to 2010, I lived and worked in Russia, first on Maternal and Infant Healthcare reform, then on the elimination of human trafficking. From 1999 to 2010, I organized and ran the Angel Coalition, an unprecedented network of small, citizen groups who often lived in rural villages without electricity or telephones, who through enormous courage and determination banded together across the entire former Soviet Union to fight human trafficking. By combining brains, trusted local connections in police, education and government and operating anonymously under the “krysha” or “roof” of the Angel Coalition, they stood up to violent trafficking rings and organized crime groups who operated international billion-dollar trafficking throughout the Russian Federation and Central Asia. It wasn’t long before we discovered that the three leading destinations for trafficked children from Russia and Central Asia were Germany, Israel and the United States.
After we had gathered sufficient data using a Forum Foundation, “Opinnionaire™, designed by Seattle drive-in burger mogul Dick Spady,[1] and sent by train to universities throughout Russia and the former Republics. We took the data to the Russian Duma who responded by strengthening laws for child protection and funding shelters for rescued victims. I then brought the data to the United Nations, US State Department in Washington, DC and the US Congress. To my shock, they refused to even look at it – turning their heads away and refusing to talk to me or read the material I had given each of them. One State Department Division, The Office to Monitor and Prevent Human Trafficking (TIP Office) issues a yearly report on the status of human trafficking in the US. As a grantee of TIP for several years, I turned over the over 500,000 datapoints we had gathered to them proving that the US was a receiving country for at least Russia and Central Asia. When the Trafficking in Persons Report was issued for 2001, none of our material was included and the TIP Office denied that the United States had a significant number of cases.[2]
Twenty years later, they are still denying that child trafficking is rampant in America even though the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General reports that ICE is unable to account for 291,000 unaccompanied children who have crossed the southern border.[3] The government approach seems to be that as long as no data is collected and collated from the 300,000 + unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border and other illegal points of entry, then the problem doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist, they don’t have to do anything about it. Is this complicity, stupidity, incompetence, laziness, or as I expect, all of the above?
I have been living in the US for ten years now trying to start the Angel Coalition in America. I find American communities every bit as eager to fight the problem as the Russians were. The difference is government cooperation. At a federal level, 90% of American funding for programs on trafficking is given to law enforcement. They have set up trafficking task forces and other resources that are useless without local participation in the process. Every state has a task force that participates in police actions but not in prevention, information campaigns, local shelters, hotlines, etc. As long as we wait for the government actors to reach out to the members of their communities, or for the federal and state governments to provide local funding, nothing will happen — until now.
On September 9, 2024, a new social media platform called Re:Public is launching. This program is uniquely designed to provide the tools that Americans need to create local actions that grow into state, regional and national actions. No other media platform provides these tools and I encourage all of you to join Re:Public, either as a free viewer or a paid activist who can post articles and videos, report news and schedule events while sharing with other social media and connecting with your government representatives. Using grassroots bottom-up tools requires a new way of thinking about social media. This is exactly why it will work against child trafficking while other social media platforms do not. Censorship is one big issue. Re:Public is owned by a patriot and run by patriotic Americans. It cannot be influenced by investors or advertisers but will be funded by memberships. Once you join, you can sign up for free training.
Re:Public will become Action Central for the citizens’ fight against Globalism, the WHO, the United Nations, government tyranny and my department, Child Trafficking. Re:Public provides all the tools we need to rebuild the Angel Coalition in America using the same successful programs that rescued over 70,000 children in Russia, but with a new name, Our Country Our Children[4]. You can join us in this action from your community. This is our plan for the next two years.
STEP ONE:
No government agency has been gathering information on child trafficking in our country, so we will do it ourselves. Our international team of web designers is constructing a program to collect data from local communities by zip code and post it on a live interactive map. Using RePublic.US, you will be asked to answer a series of questions about what you know about trafficking/migration in your area. Equally important are your opinions. You may not know who the traffickers are, but you believe there is trafficking going on. That is equally important. Once we have gathered a sufficient number of data-points for a region, we can go to law enforcement and begin the process of calling a grand jury to investigate. Based on my experience in Russia, it isn’t long before we start gathering information on specific trafficking rings that can also be delivered to law enforcement in a legal proceeding. We will begin working with state funded trafficking task forces, become trusted media sources for trafficking articles and participate in the training of police forces as children are rescued. State shelters must also be trained to take and rehabilitate these children. This all hinges on getting the data at the ground level and sending it up the chain.
STEP TWO:
As we collect data, train and share training between local partners and build trusting relationships between citizens, police, task forces, sheriffs, media, education and local government, we will be designing and planning a nationwide Public Information Campaign to launch across America on July 4, 2026 (PIC/26). On one day, thousands of local organizations will simultaneously sponsor media events designed to make the biggest news splash at the least expense and lowest risk. We did this across Russia from Vladivostock to Kaliningrad and the impact resulted in permanent change across the Russian Federation.[5] We can do the same or better. The campaign will last three months during which time groups will deliver posters, fliers, booklets, set up helplines, sponsor online chatrooms, podcasts and news.
None of this happens spontaneously. We will spend the next two years building each of your local networks using the unique tools developed by Re:Public. As soon as RePublic.US is launched, we will start holding webinar training on Our Country Our Children to build up a core group of local activists and build from there.
As we build local “trust networks” and expand them to state and national networks, our work becomes a template for actions in every sphere that affects our communities from grooming in schools, to health policies, and to freedom of speech and assembly.
I look forward to participating in webinars and trainings with each of you, either online or in person as we move forward in our inexorable march to free the children and eliminate child trafficking in America.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Dick-Spady-Life-Visions-Values/dp/ 0615953832
[2] Memoir, Fighting Human Trafficking in Russia (julietteengel.com)
[3] Management Alert- ICE Cannot Monitor All Unaccompanied Migrant Children Released from DHS and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Custody
