Welcome to the empower you podcast.
I have with me today, Michael, who's a former FBI agent who has worked exclusively in child
and sex trafficking.
And through getting to know Michael over the last few months, it's been apparent to me
that he has such a unique position in relation to our society, our culture, that there's
really big time demons at work.
And as many of you know, because of the media, we had the movie come out, Sound of Freedom.
And for that, we had taken with Liam Neeson.
There's definitely been a widespread interest in this area.
And I think most of us, myself included, would say we we knew something about it, Michael,
but we didn't know that it was as widespread as it is.
And we also didn't know that it's coming to our shore.
I mean, it's it's it's almost comforting to think that it's out there.
But now we're realizing more and more that it's actually in America in a big way in our
even our cities here.
But to get started, Michael, tell us a little bit about yourself.
You you actually grew up in Colorado Springs and came from a Christian home.
So sounds like you had a great upbringing.
Yes.
And Steve, thank you for letting me come here and speak with you all.
I appreciate it very much.
Yeah, so I did.
I grew up in a Christian home, have, you know, parents who love Jesus and then serve in Jesus
and in different missionary organizations for the last 40, 45 years now.
And then we we moved here when I was in high school and went here to Colorado Springs Christian
school for high school before going off to the military.
So, Michael, you went on and you went to West Point.
I did.
So you wanted to have a military career.
Yeah.
And my dad has worked in military ministry for his entire life.
So he was he was in the military himself and he was working with cadets quite a bit here
at the Air Force Academy.
So I grew up around cadets, grew up around Air Force guys, Navy, Army.
When I started looking at where I wanted to go, I put in for all the all the academies.
Only one took me.
So that's where I went.
Well, that's great.
And so then how many how long were you in the Army?
So after I graduated, I was in for about six years as an infantry officer.
OK.
And then how in the world did you go from Christian Army?
The first part I get, OK, get that.
But how did you get into the FBI and the bureau?
I didn't know anything about law enforcement growing up.
I didn't have any family members or anything like that that were in law enforcement.
Even when I was in the military, I didn't know much about it.
I didn't know anything about the FBI or DEA, ATF.
I had no idea what the different organizations did.
Back in one of my deployments, I was in Afghanistan and had three agents attached to my my platoon
at the time.
And they were just really good guys who I saw really had a heart for what they were
doing.
They talked throughout that deployment.
They talked to me a lot about what the bureau does, what their mission is.
Some of the specific organizations within the bureau that I might find of interest.
And so over the I didn't actually at the time, I just I said, thank you.
But I'm going to be staying in the Army for 20 years.
And a couple of years later, after some more deployments and more time away, I decided
I wanted I wanted to move on and be a be a good father, be a good husband, be home more.
And then I started putting in applications for different places and decided, you know
what?
Let's let's put one into the FBI.
I'm sure I'll not get in because it's pretty competitive.
But ended up actually that was one of the first job offers I got.
And so I prayed about it.
And that's where the Lord took me.
How many years were you in the FBI?
15 years.
So did you right out of the chute move into this arena of sex trafficking, child trafficking,
this kind of arena?
Or did that kind of gradually happen over time?
I would say this started with my wife, really.
She started getting just had a heart for what was going on back in like maybe 2010, 2012.
She started partnering with some organizations that were already involved in helping women
overseas.
There's some some really good ones out there that do micro loans and help women build businesses
internationally so that they don't get into a place, a cycle where they are now are desperate
for money and they have other options.
So she started partnering with some of those organizations.
And then over the next four or five years, I was on I was on the hostage rescue team
with the FBI.
And I had a pretty unique just I got to see a lot of the world, got to see a lot of the
United States.
And over over those 10 years.
The Lord kind of started putting more in my heart, like,
hey, this is the direction I want you to go someday.
I thought he meant at 50, when I could retire.
And I did not plan on leaving early.
And so when I came across the organization
that I now work for, I argued with them about it
because the timing was not,
that was not the timing I was planning on.
And then-
So God's timing is a little bit different
than ours sometimes, right?
Oh yeah, quite a bit.
And I was like, this can't be the right time to do this.
But over six or eight months,
he just kind of kept chipping away at me.
This is the way I want you to go.
I'm not gonna show you what it's gonna look like yet,
but I do want you to obey me.
And that was hard.
I'll be honest, like walking away from,
you know, 25 years of government without anything
to show for it, if you will, that was a hard choice.
I, you know, I have a family to provide for
and I want to make sure I can still provide for them.
So this was a pretty large leap of faith.
So what was it?
I mean, what was it that God was doing in your heart?
What were you observing?
What was ministering to your heart
that you'd be willing to give up your retirement
in order to go in and go with this ministry?
Can you share what the ministry is?
Yeah, so there's a couple different organizations
that I work for, but the primary one
that I left the Bureau to come work for
is called Freedom Shield Foundation.
What I'll tell you first off is that
they love Jesus a lot.
The executive director of Freedom Shield
is a very godly woman who spent a lot of time
with victims in the last 12 to 15 years now
across multiple spectrums of trauma.
She spent months in Iraq with ISIS victims,
women who had been captured by ISIS,
trafficked up into Syria, sold between ISIS fighters,
and she spent a lot of time with those women
trying to help them survive after they got back
because what we started to see was that there were,
you know, we had got them into a safe place.
They were no longer in harm's way.
They were no longer being trafficked and raped.
However, the trauma of that was more than
many of them could deal with.
And so she, you know, as she likes to describe,
sat in a tent with Jesus for about a month
and asked him how to help them.
And he gave her some, he gave her a plan,
a program, if you will, and that's what she's been using
ever since with victims across the world.
But I see Jesus in her.
The other person I work for is on another,
our international arm, which is called Hawkwood Foundation,
and Ro is the executive director of that.
You know, I think in some ways,
both he and Carrie, in their own ways,
are some of the most godly people I've ever seen
in a practical way in how to live out their faith,
not just to people that they don't know,
but to the people that work around them and for them.
That was the first thing that attracted me, to be honest.
The work is the other half of that,
and that's rescuing people who can't rescue themselves.
Like, they're in places where they can't
get out of harm's way, and nobody's coming for them,
and that's internationally and domestically.
And I have, I do believe God has made me a protector.
I do believe God's called me to that job,
and that's what I've, I felt like I did
for those 20, 25 years in the government,
and I feel that he's given me the ability
to take all that experience and all those lessons learned
and apply it in a different way now.
So tell me what you did with the FBI
that's related to this that kinda was eye-opening
and convicting to your heart as you did it.
Yeah, so I did a variety of investigations.
I worked counterterrorism investigations.
I was on that tactical team.
I mentioned HRT for about 10 years.
During that time, you know, it is,
HRT is a phenomenal organization within the FBI
that has some of the most talented people
I've ever had the privilege to work alongside of.
Extremely motivated, outside the box,
high-performing, HRT has the ability,
they're responsible domestically
for any kind of hostage situation or terrorism event
as far as a tactical response goes.
Local law enforcement often has to immediately respond,
and then if the incident's still going on,
HRT is usually brought in.
What does HRT mean?
Hostage Rescue Team.
So it's the FBI's full-time tactical team.
Think of them as the local federal law enforcement
equivalent of many of the same responsibilities
that Delta Force has and SEAL Team Six has.
So anything from large-scale hostage situations
to boat take-backs to aircraft take-back.
You know, if there's an Alpine.
incident, if they have a military free fall program,
like, they do everything.
They're a phenomenal group of people.
So that's where a lot of that initial experience came from.
When I moved here a couple years ago,
I started working down in Pueblo,
working with a partner of mine,
actually a former teammate,
phenomenal individual who taught me a lot.
And he'd been here for a couple years
and he'd work in gangs and dope and trafficking,
child pornography, violent crimes against children,
just everything.
When you're in a small office,
you kind of have to work everything.
That's when I started getting more and more of a glimpse
into what's going on locally.
So is that surprising to you?
That here we are in the United States,
kind of, I would say, middle class,
even upper middle class in Colorado Springs,
probably lower middle class in Pueblo,
that all this was going on with...
Let me ask you something.
I'm not even sure I'm saying it right.
Would you call it child trafficking?
Would you call it sex trafficking?
Would you use both interchangeably?
Sure.
So within the realm of human trafficking,
the four primary categories are sex trafficking,
child soldiers, slave labor, and then organ trafficking.
So sex trafficking would encompass any time
that a person is being sold for money
or for some sort of other compensation
for sexual purposes.
So whether it's an adult or a child,
both would fall under sex trafficking.
The legal parameters of sex trafficking for a child
is different than it is for an adult,
in the sense that a child cannot give consent for sex
if they're being held against their will,
whereas an adult has the ability to make a decision
and actually say, I consent to this.
So from a legal point of view,
sex trafficking of a minor is much easier to prove
because you don't have to prove coercion,
versus with an adult, you have to prove some sort of,
some sort of coercion.
It could be violence, could be you have their IDs.
It could be, there's a whole bunch of different ways
that you can coerce a person,
but with adults, that proof is tougher to do
versus with a child.
If the child's in somebody's control and was being sold,
like, that's fairly straightforward.
So this is happening in America.
Yeah, it is.
So I was talking to another individual
in a similar background as yourself,
and he was telling me that he felt that America
was probably number one in the world
as far as a purveyor of sex trafficking,
human trafficking, and probably child trafficking.
We didn't go through all those categories
that you just mentioned,
especially along the seaboard.
So he was talking about it being around,
like, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas,
coming all really packed in along there,
and they have some kind of a code
by which they track these things,
and it's really red down in there.
And then also on the border with Mexico and stuff.
Is that, that seemed to fit with what you discovered too,
or were you more international than national?
So on the investigations that I was doing here
local in Colorado, it was more local to Colorado.
I would say the guys that are working on the border areas
do see this more often because human smuggling
often turns into human trafficking.
So somebody who's-
Tell us the difference.
So smuggling is basically just getting someone
across a border and moving them into a location
that they, without proper paperwork, let's just say that,
you know, a lot of the human smuggling routes
are the same routes that people are using
to smuggle in arms, drugs, all kinds of other stuff
that they can sell in the black market.
So a lot of these smuggling routes can be similar.
What often happens with someone who's smuggled
into another country is that they often
have had their documents taken, or they have no documents,
and then in order to get documents
or to get their documents back, they often have to pay, right?
And so if they couldn't pay up front,
then they pay afterwards.
If they have to pay afterwards,
that usually involves some sort of service.
It could be slave labor.
It could be working in a kitchen and being paid nothing.
It could be sex trafficking.
Even sometimes there's times where folks
are maybe giving up an organ
in order to repay their smuggling.
So what happens is that can easily turn into trafficking.
So smuggling, there's a lot of smuggling going on
and starting all the way from South America
through Central America and then up.
And a lot of these, what we're seeing
is a lot of these women specifically, but also families,
they are being brought in and they're getting trafficked
in locations along the route
and then brought up to the United States.
So as far as, and I've heard the same statistic,
the United.
States is first, I can't speak to that.
I think that's a very hard thing to prove.
Quantitate, yeah.
Because if you look at our number of prosecutions
against human trafficking, we don't have a lot going on.
In fact, I think in the state of Colorado,
we didn't even have one convicted person
in the last 12 months.
So if you look at that across the spectrum
of the United States, that's, I think,
telling that it is going on.
It is a huge problem.
We are huge consumers.
As far as the numbers go, that's a tough,
I think that's tough to prove.
Right, right.
So you said Oregon.
Now, Oregon smuggling.
Now, I could see that happening maybe with abortions
and stuff like that.
But you mentioned then someone who's maybe having
to pay back someone who's kind of almost
like an indentured servant or slave to you.
Explain to me more about what that is
and what happens there.
So Oregon trafficking has been going on for a while now,
but it's getting more public.
I think what's been going on,
we know that there's quite a bit of Oregon trafficking
that's been occurring in China for quite some time.
But what we're also starting to see is people who need,
people with means, Americans, Russians, Chinese,
Europeans that need organs and they're on a waiting list.
They want that organ sooner.
They don't want to be on a waiting list.
And so they can pay.
On the black market, there's quite a few websites,
I'm sorry, on the black web, dark web,
that are sold, if you will, on the black market
for maybe you get a heart for $250,000
or maybe you get a lung for $200,000.
This stuff's being sold regularly on the dark web.
Well, if it's a heart, they're gonna die, right?
Yeah.
So they're doing that maybe for their family
so that everybody in the family is off the hook.
I mean, they're allowing themselves to die, basically.
I would tell you that I don't think
that the majority of them are allowing themselves to die.
I think that people are being targeted.
Maybe there's homeless people, they could be runaways,
they could be people that no one knows or cares about.
So they're coerced maybe, or they're kidnapped,
and then they are just used for that.
We have people that'll go down, for instance,
down to the Caribbean for plastic surgery
because it'll be less expensive down there,
show up, go into a clinic, and then wake up,
and the clinic's suddenly been closed up
and they're missing a kidney, right?
So they didn't get any plastic surgery,
and something was taken from them.
So this stuff is happening.
It's happening in legitimate hospitals,
and it's a dark world, yeah.
So tell me what you did.
What was your, like the last few years here locally,
what did you find yourself involved in the most
through the FBI work that you were doing?
The majority of what we're doing down in Pueblo
had to do with gangs and drugs and guns.
There's a lot of violence down there.
It's finding its way up into the springs.
It's not isolated anymore.
But we did work a lot of that stuff.
We have just a phenomenal relationship
with the police department down there.
The Pueblo PD, they're fantastic officers
and lieutenants and captains.
They're extremely hardworking.
They care about the community,
and they're doing a fantastic job down there.
So we had a really good relationship with them.
We would often help them with some of their cases,
and sometimes they would bring their cases to us
because it was more beneficial
to look at it from a federal perspective.
And so I worked, again, during that time
was working those things,
and we started to get some human trafficking glimpses,
but not a lot.
We also have to work, again,
some of that child pornography-type stuff.
We have specific people who work those cases,
but we end up having to,
I end up having to work through some of that stuff.
And then, again, child,
so you have child pornography,
and then you have child abuse, sexual abuse material.
So there's one thing to take photos,
and then child sexual abuse
moves into some sort of violation sexually of the child.
So we had to work some of that stuff, too.
So how did God use this?
Because it sounds like it was actually more indirect
in relation to human trafficking.
You were more focused on the gangs,
and the guns, and all that,
but obviously there was something happening in you
that was making you more and more sensitive to that.
How did that happen?
And that started for me several years back
where I felt I have a heart for folks
that have gone through a significant amount of trauma
and have nowhere to go.
So one of the places that I think has been unaddressed
in our country.
is the police officers that deal with PTS, and I have a real heart for those
guys because they do this day in and day out. I was a soldier, I did
multiple deployments, I've seen combat, and I have my own trauma from
that, so I'm not trying to take away from the veterans because they've
seen a lot in the last 20 years. I would also argue though that police
officers do this every day, and they see things every day that are hard for
them to see. They deal with trauma every single day, and so unfortunately a lot of
law enforcement I don't believe are being taken care of real well, and after
the fact, I think the last time I looked it up, the average statistic for law
enforcement across the full spectrum of federal, state, local, is around two to
three years post-retirement. Now that's not a long time, that's really
quick, and I think a lot of times that comes from unaddressed trauma that these
guys are having to fight through, and they're trying to do it by themselves, so
part of my hope someday is to have a place, I don't know, somewhere out in the
mountains where these guys can come and recover for a couple months, and they can
have people give back into them, pour into them, and
help them get out of the place that they're in. I'd also like to have a place
where we can do that for trafficking victims, so those are kind of the two
demographics where, like Jesus said, serving widows and
orphans, like that is true religion, and that's where Roe, when he started off
about 15 years ago in this world, he actually started off with an
organization called Orphan Secure, and their job was to internationally go to
orphanages that were having trouble with people breaking in to their facility and
taking kids, and so he would go around the world, and he'd do this down in Mexico
quite a bit, and help prevent those facilities from being broken into. Part
of what we do down in Dallas, which is where Freedom Shield is based, is also we
have a widows program down there, we have a feeding program down there where we
feed on a, we're trying to do it on a quarterly basis, but the most impoverished
zip code down in Dallas, and just again being the hands and feet. So I say
that's a lot, I probably didn't answer your question directly, but it's been
something on my own heart, now having family, having daughters, and looking at
some of these situations where these people are stuck, and they don't have a
great way to get out of it, and I feel called to help. So Michael, tell us what
Freedom Shield is doing in the Dallas area, because I know you have a desire to
see it happen in Colorado Springs, but tell us how long that's been going, and
what exactly they do in the Dallas area. Yeah, thank you. So Freedom Shield
started off, it moved into Freedom Shield around that 2000, 2013, 14 range. At that
time we started, we were in the Philippines, working there, primarily
trying to get help to get these child soldiers out of these camps. I think
we're in, I don't know, several thousand kids that we've been able to help
facilitate getting out of these camps where they were being forced to fight
against each other. Then we moved into Iraq. We were in Iraq heavy for about
three years. We've been in Afghanistan for the last three years, helping out
with a lot of folks who were left behind, who were being targeted by the Taliban
after we left. About the same time we got into Afghanistan, back in
2020-21, Cary wanted to start opening safe houses for human trafficking
victims. So within the human trafficking aftercare, there's short-term care,
emergency care, short-term care, and then long-term care. That long-term care is
six months to 24 months, maybe. That short-term care is like within a couple
days, getting off the street, post-detox, getting into someplace where they can be
safe for a couple weeks. What we've seen is in the long-term care, a lot of
girls fail. Upwards of 75% to 80% of women fail or quit that
long-term care in the first couple weeks. It's a very volatile time for
them. So what Cary started focusing on, based on all those women that she was
helping coming out of ISIS control, and how God really gave her a program to
help these women, she started doing the same thing in the short-term, we call it
stabilization phase. So we have two of those down in Dallas. We only serve one
girl per safe house at a time. We have people with them 24-7.
We're not keeping them there. They volunteer to come, but we stay
with them 24-7 so that they always have somebody with them. The biggest thing
that we do down there in that stabilization phase is get them sleeping
again. We're trying to give them some basic coping skills, some life skills,
trying to give them the ability to get through the night if they're having
nightmares, and really just showing them Jesus. We're not
beating them over the head with the Bible.
making them pray with us every day.
We're not doing that.
However, they're being prayed for every single day
by multiple people outside of the safe house,
and they're also practically seeing Jesus every day
because all the women that surround them
know Jesus and love him.
So I know that as a social worker,
which is what I did after college briefly
and then went on in the mission field,
so I didn't do it for very long,
but I know in the social work area,
who you get and how long they've been involved in stuff
has a lot to do with how quickly they can come out of it.
I know that's true in AA, porn, and drug addiction
is that if they've been in it for a really long time,
it's pretty ingrained.
It's almost like that prefrontal cortex
has got the ditches so deep through the dopamine fix
that they're on that they really have a hard time
getting set free, but if the ditches aren't as deep,
there's a chance.
I know in one sense, you're still learning and growing
in all of this.
You'll know a lot more a year or two from now,
but from what you know right now,
is there a certain type of woman,
I'm assuming it's mainly women,
that you guys do get into the safe house that do well
versus those who drop out or even go back to the lifestyle?
Yeah, so part of our process,
we call it our intake process, is a PTS screening.
PTS meaning like PTSD, like post-trauma?
Yeah. Okay.
So we do a screening for these ladies beforehand.
So there's that, and there haven't been too many times
where we've said no.
There have been a couple.
If they have a history of running away as a child
and they've been on the street for a long time
and they like to run away from places that they go,
that may be hard because we have to protect
the places where we do this.
We have to protect the people, our people that are there.
And so if someone is unwilling to,
if we think there's a high likelihood where they will leave
and then they could compromise that location,
then we have to be aware of that beforehand.
So there's that.
There's, again, a level of trauma.
We have dealt with some very significant trauma.
It is, you know, things that I probably don't want to,
I don't want to share today,
just some of the awful things that have been done
to some of these women.
So yes, that is a concern.
What I will say is that there's no human wisdom
that's going to put people back together.
There's no human program that's going to put a soul
back together.
The only person who can do that is Jesus.
And so what we're seeing is that Christ is the one
that's putting these ladies back together.
Again, we're not preaching at them.
We're not making them pray with us,
but I tell you, like, I think we're around 50%
of these women during their time with us,
right after their time with us,
or in long-term care, come to know Christ.
And that's not because we're phenomenal people
and they just saw, you know,
oh, I just want to be like them.
But I do think they see something in these ladies.
They see something in these advocates
that they haven't seen before.
It may be the first time they were ever actually
given something without being asked for anything in return.
It's a lot of times the first time
that they've ever seen practically what love looks like.
And so, you know, I do think you're right,
that there are certain kinds of trauma
that's harder than others,
but I know Christ can put anyone back together
and that regardless of their trauma.
And we saw him do that time and time again in scripture.
So what do you do with those that decide
to pursue the program?
They're going to stick to it.
They're going to work on it.
Do they kind of ever like graduate out?
Like how does that,
what's been the track record there in Dallas?
Yeah, that's a great question too.
So we have, we typically have helped around 15 women a year,
12 to 15, depends on the year.
Sometimes they've stayed for a week.
Sometimes they've stayed for a couple of months.
I think we're at around 56 women currently.
I think we have someone right now.
So there were 56, 57 women in the last three years
that we've been able to serve.
They, the goal of the stabilization with us
in the safe house is to get them to a place where,
again, they're sleeping,
they're able to take care of themselves.
They've got their voice back.
You know, they lost their voice.
They didn't have a voice for a long time.
They didn't have, they didn't get to make choices.
So, you know, hey, let's, what do you want to eat today?
Let's cook together.
Let's go for a walk together.
Let's go, you know, go grocery shopping together.
Again, not huge things,
but given those ladies, their voice back is huge for them.
And I think a lot of us take for granted our freedom.
We don't recognize when you don't have a choice
and you are stuck because of an addiction to drugs,
because of a grooming that occurred,
because these girls look at their,
they can often look at their pimps as their boyfriends.
They love me.
you know, and there's a bond that has, it's a trauma bond.
They've literally have a trauma bond with a lot of these, these men.
So getting them out of that is, it's a long process. When we,
what we're focusing on is just getting them through the most volatile time,
which is usually that first month or so,
but we're also helping them get to a longterm facility. So there's,
we know if there's anywhere between 50,
60 or so longterm facilities in the country,
a lot of open and close all the time because of support or lack of staff.
But we partner with around 13, I think right now of those 50.
And we partner with those because Carrie's and her team have vetted
those organizations.
They know that Jesus is involved in those organizations.
They know that the program that they're going to take the women through works
well. And so when she partners with somebody,
she does a lot of vetting beforehand. So the goal is to get them,
if they want to go and some women don't want to,
but the goal is to get them to longterm care where they can,
they can actually have months, maybe a year,
maybe longer of being able to be cared for and be restored.
So how does a young girl find Freedom Shield?
How does she get in the queue as it were to be accepted
into say a restoration process?
So referrals come through a variety of ways. You know,
once we have our safe house here in the Springs, you know, I'll, I'll be very,
I'll be talking to CSPD, the Bureau, Pueblo PD, you know,
I'll be talking with all the law enforcement agencies and saying, Hey guys,
if you come across somebody, call me and or call our team.
I'm not going to be running the safe house that we'll have.
We're going to hire some, some ladies who have experience in that,
to run that here, but we'll call me, call them. And so we have referrals,
through law enforcement, obviously down in Houston, I'm sorry, down in Dallas.
We have a fantastic relationship with HSI and we get a lot of referrals through
them. Sometimes we'll get referrals. Actually,
we have quite a few through another good partner of ours called Rescue America.
They run a national hotline and they have it all.
They have it staffed 24 seven with dozens of people who answer the phone when it,
when it rings. And, and so these, these ladies, these women,
these girls can call. And a lot of times it's not like, Hey, I need out now.
It's sometime.
A lot of times it's a process for them to make that decision to leave because of
the things that I told you about for the trauma bond addiction.
Maybe they have a child and they don't know what to do. They don't know how to,
how to handle that situation. They've got some custody battle or custody issues.
So it may take a lot of these ladies a while to talk with folks to,
to get them to the point where they're ready to leave.
So we get quite a few referrals through Rescue America as well.
So there's a variety of referrals that we can come across.
I've had old friends call me out of the blue recently who had heard what I was
doing and you're like, Hey, I've got a situation, you know,
so I keep seeing God's hand in it. I don't, like I said,
I can't see the longterm.
I don't exactly know what this is going to look like and in five years,
but I do know that I'm seeing his hand and I'm just trying to try not to get
ahead of him, trying to stay with him. Yeah. That's hard for me sometimes.
I like to sprint and he's like, Hey man, you missed the turn.
Wake way back here.
Yeah. Well, this is a whole nother area for you.
I mean, you're really trying to raise finances and raise awareness.
It's stuff where you've been more of an operator out there doing the job.
So that's kind of, it's a different role. It's a hard role for me. I, I,
I, I, again, a lot of my job is on the international side.
So I do keep waiting for the Lord to say, all right,
I'm ready to get ready to send you off to a number of things.
Project. We raise money for projects. So we don't raise money. Like my,
my salary, all the guys salaries are paid for by our business that we have.
So I don't have to fundraise for myself, which is nice. I, when I,
and I've never fundraised in my life. You know, our conversation, you know,
a couple of months ago is one of the first ones I've ever had. And but the beauty
of what we do is like, Hey, we,
we have a country that we're going to go build capacity in. We have a,
like right now we're looking at what we can do in Israel.
So we've been in a lot of places.
Usually they're some of the more difficult locations at the time.
And so I'm ready when the Lord's ready to start sending me to do that.
I'll do that too.
Freedom shield has been only in Dallas, right?
Yeah. Now they're trying to go international.
And that's one of the reasons why they hired you.
No. So I apologize if I miscommunicated.
They they've had offices internationally for over a 10 years now.
The U S they're in Dallas.
Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah, they are.
And then we have another gentleman who works with me here.
And I think a couple other folks that we're going to bring on in the next 12
months. So I think we will have a team here within the next year.
We're going to have five or six people that are going to be on involved in this,
that are on staff.
And then we've been meeting with like with self people like yourself and other
pastors and I'm in growing our,
our volunteer pool for.
a safe house, and I think that's going to, it's going really well.
We've got about 16 or 17 women who have stepped up and put their applications in and said,
I want to help.
What can I do?
So it's going well.
So Michael, who's doing this?
I mean, let's just talk in terms of, let's start international and then we'll do national.
But on the international, human trafficking, organ trafficking, sex trafficking, in those
realms, is there a type of organization or individual or both that seems to be the kind
that benefits the most from doing this kind of stuff?
Across the world, it's big.
Sure.
Absolutely.
I mean, I think we have more human slaves today than any other time in the history of
the world.
It's like crazy.
So who's doing it?
What's happening with that?
You know, I think that's a hard question.
Organized crime, by and large, controls the majority of the trafficking, whether it's
drug trafficking, human trafficking, gun running, I mean, organized crime generally, that is
who we're dealing with, whether it's American gangs in organized crime or Russians or Chinese
or, you know, there's organized crime in every single country in the world, in some manner.
So, but a lot of the trafficking, I would say, internationally is being done by organized
crime within those countries.
But anytime that there's a conflict and there's an opportunity to make money, it's going to
happen.
You know, there's going to be trafficking that's going, there's going to be trafficking
right now, it's probably going on somehow in the conflict in Israel and Palestine, you
know, somebody will find a way to make money off the situation, sadly.
Turkey, after the earthquake, that was, that was a huge problem.
You've got a bunch of missing people, you know, missing moms and dads, but they found
some kids and your mom and dad are missing, what do we do?
We can make money on this.
So, like, anytime you have a huge conflict, you're going to have the opportunity to make
money.
Where you have the opportunity to make money, somebody's going to find a way to do it.
So we think of organized crime sometimes in America as being like the mafia or something
like that.
Sure.
So you're talking more about local gangs, right, that are involved in this kind of stuff
to make money.
Yeah, absolutely.
Local gangs.
But I mean, it can be Mexican cartel, it could be affiliates of cartel, it could be MS-13.
You know, there's a large variety of gangs out there.
It's gotten to the point now where, you know, I don't even know how many gang, current gangs
we have running in the United States.
But there are, there are organizations, criminal organizations that will not traffic humans.
There are organizations that say, we'll do these things, but we won't do this.
So those do exist.
But by and large, most people, if they can make money doing it, they can, they're going
to do it.
And especially with the drug trafficking.
I mean, a lot of the folks who are involved in drug trafficking are also involved in sex
trafficking as well.
Okay.
So when you were working in Pueblo, were you working mainly with, in the realm of local,
kind of local gangs versus syndicates?
I think of like syndicates being big and quite a hierarchy.
Is it, is it more local thugs kind of folks or is it syndicates?
So yeah, I would say down in Pueblo, it's more local gangs.
In the Springs, you start to have more, if you will, franchise gangs.
So gangs that have members in other places that were started in other places and they
now have an operation here in the Springs or definitely in Denver.
I mean, the I-25 corridor obviously is a long one that goes north and south pretty far.
You also in Denver have 70.
So you've got an east-west primary route and you've got a north-south one as well.
So as far as the movement of people, I mean, there's people being moved through Colorado
Springs every day that people probably don't know.
They're never going to know that somebody was getting moved.
It could have been a person who is from Texas and Dallas and he, he's got two girls in the
car with him.
And you know, oh yeah, these is my girlfriend and my sister is if they ever to get stopped.
But the reality is, is he taking them from city to city to city and trafficking or different
locations.
So, I mean, it can be anything from that small of a scale to, you know, a larger scale.
So how do they transport them?
I mean, you know, you got, we've got a couple of big truck stops.
Sure.
Locally.
My sense from talking to a lot of people has been that a lot of the truckers are actually
on the lookout.
I mean, they're trying to help.
These are good guys or honest guys.
They're salt of the earth guys.
Yeah.
But I'm sure there's, I mean, in any group you've got, you got your centers, right?
Sure.
So is it through, is it through that or is it just more like what you just said?
And it's, it's an individual who's got just several cause it's just easier to hide.
I know it's both, but you are in it.
I mean, so what would you say was more of the, um,
the composite of what you're looking for.
Yeah.
So again, what we were seeing and what we find,
you can find online.
I mean, you can, you know, there's most of the advertisements
you can find online are from individuals
who are either getting taken around the country
or from folks, you know, that are in a specific city
and someone is putting their advertisement up
in a different city and then has-
What do you mean their advertisement or their-
So, you know, there's multiple sites out,
websites out there that sell sex.
So women go on and say,
hey, I'm willing to come to your place
or you come to mine, meet you in a hotel,
here's my services, here's the price.
That stuff has become very common now, unfortunately.
And so these women are being sold, many of them.
Some are independents and some are, you know,
doing it on their own.
But a lot of times they end up,
they end up having someone do their advertising for them
or someone to protect them.
And so they, you know, if they get into a situation,
they have someone that can back them up, I guess,
if you want to call it that.
So that's when you start to get into the,
like you have a trafficker, you have a pimp,
you have someone who's controlling you
and who's managing, you know, taking the money,
taking part of the money,
setting up your appointments, that kind of stuff.
But yeah, it does go on-
But how do they transport them?
I mean, could you mention the I-25 corridor?
Sure.
I-70 is going to be more your East-West.
Somebody's driving the plane, right?
So what's-
They might fly them, you know,
they might be flying together.
Flying, okay.
They could absolutely, I mean, a lot of,
I think the situations we, and again,
like my experience doing this was only a couple of years.
There's guys, like HSI here does a really good job
with trafficking and they work really hard on this.
I know some of the guys over there and they're fantastic.
But, you know, we're seeing everything from,
we've heard, yeah, there was a, I think,
I heard a, I think it was recently,
there was a truck that was pulled over
that had a group of people in it.
I think it was in Monument.
It might've been at a truck stop
in the last six or seven months.
I've also heard of, you know, again,
situations where literally it's just people in a car
driving from city to city to city.
So you, you know, you would look at
just a normal passenger car or a truck or a van.
It could, yeah, I mean, the idea of like,
hey, we've got 50 people in a panel van
that's just constantly going up and down I-25.
I think that is possible and I think that does happen.
I don't think it's as common as we,
some people seem to think it is.
But again, this is going on in our backyard.
This is going on in every neighborhood in Colorado Springs.
It doesn't matter if you're on the South,
North, East, West side.
Every neighborhood?
It's going on in all neighborhoods.
Like there are people that are,
again, if you can make money doing it,
you're gonna do it.
And so it's, I think people would be very surprised
if they were to realize what to look for.
And if they started looking for people
that don't have control of their cell phone,
people who don't have control of their money,
people who don't have control of their IDs.
These are some of the ways that we could notice things.
You can start to see,
this person doesn't seem to have a voice.
Why does that man always speak for her when she's addressed?
Like things like that,
I'm not saying every situation's like that,
but those are small things that I think we
maybe don't even pay attention to.
And the more we know about what to look for,
the more likely we are to identify that kind of situation.
Do you feel like there's a lot of kids being kidnapped
taken from their homes or on the street
or after school or something like that in America?
Do you think that, or let's just say Colorado Springs.
Do you think that's happening?
Active kidnappings, I think, are more on the low side.
However, what we do have is a lot of at-risk youth.
We have a lot of kids that run away.
And so these guys that are trafficking people,
they're predators, they're wolves.
And they know what vulnerable looks like.
And they know how to identify that person quickly.
And they know how to manipulate that person
and come alongside and,
hey, let me buy some meat, let me buy a meal.
Are you, oh, you're by yourself.
Where are you?
Whoa, okay, well, how old are you?
And that stuff happens.
It absolutely is happening.
So it's not, I wouldn't call it an active kidnapping case
on a regular basis, but there's a lot of runaways.
More grooming.
A lot of grooming.
And there's a lot of missing children in the United States.
Yeah, I know.
A lot of missing kids that just disappeared.
Yeah.
So I think that, again,
can we prove they're being trafficked?
Not always, not necessarily.
But if you look at the increase in child pornography
in the last several years since COVID,
it's gone through the roof several thousand percent
of material that's been produced.
So while you can't say, hey,
we know exactly how many kids are being trafficked.
If we have seen an increase in the production
of child pornography and CSAM,
the child sexual abuse material,
then we know that there's a lot more kids
that are getting hurt.
Are they getting trafficked?
Maybe, maybe not.
But we know they're getting hurt.
And so once you go down that road
of
Taking pictures of kids or hurting kids
Again, they're doing it for money if they can make money doing it. It's gonna happen
well, Michael, thank you for being with us today and
man, god bless you as you endeavor to bring freedom shield to even our city and
God's put you in this place for such a time as this and your unique
skill gifting anointing talents is
Seems like it's tailor-made
To begin to make a dent in
demonic
Territorial stuff that's happening in this region and I think around the world
I think that's more what you're gonna be doing is more international
but thank you for being with us today taking time to be with us and
Can I pray for you? Absolutely. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah. Well, thank you Lord for my brother. Thank you for his passion
for the kingdom of God
for being a protector wanting to
Be in a sense kind of an angel
I always think of an angel as a messenger
Who comes and brings good news and I just pray that you'd use Michael to bring good news and set the captives free
That's the vision of Jesus
So we asked Lord that freedom shield could be developed here in this area and around the world in greater and greater measure give them
influence give them
Wisdom and anointing Lord you say we seek we shall find if we ask the door will be open and so father
we're asking we're knocking we're seeking for you to
Elevate the the work of freedom shield
Around the world. So thank you for my brother
Thank you for Michael and I pray Lord a blessing over him and his wife and his family protect them
Give them lots of joy in the midst of this kind of
Exposure, I pray Lord that the joy of the Lord will be their strength
Thank you God in your name. We pray. Amen
Thank you, Steve
You