11 men and four teenage boys had come from Paraguay to Brazil in search of the kinds of things every human being deserves: a safe place to live. Steady work. Nourishing food. The means to provide for their families.
Instead, the laborers found themselves isolated on a remote cassava farm. They were crammed into shacks that barely qualified as shelter, without proper sanitation. Their hopes disappeared under the crushing weight of long work days in the sun, days for which they were barely compensated. The employers who had lured them onto the property doled out insufficient food, leaving the men and boys exhausted. They didn’t even have access to proper protective gear as they worked with the farm equipment.
Local law enforcement had been trained by The Exodus Road’s TraffickWatch Academy Brazil and equipped with Cellebrite technology. They were ready to act.
When police arrived on the farm, they found the men working in degrading conditions. They quickly removed them, identifying that two men were responsible for trafficking these workers. Both men were brought into custody, where the government of Brazil will try them for “the crime of subjecting individuals to conditions analogous to slavery, subjecting them to forced labor or exhausting work hours, subjecting them to degrading working conditions, restricting, by any means, their movement due to debts contracted with the employer, in addition to the penalty corresponding to violence.”
These men and boys have had their rights restored, thanks to partnership between The Exodus Road’s community, Cellebrite, and law enforcement partners in Brazil. We believe that no one, especially not kids like these 4 Paraguayan boys, should be sold or exploited. Thank you for standing alongside us in that truth!
Children like Camila are waiting to be freed.
This Giving Tuesday, will you join us so that we can find and free more children who are being trafficked right now? The Exodus Road works closely with authorities and social workers to recover and provide care to girls like Camila.
