Youngkin calls for multi-state support to dismantle traffic networks

Arlington, Virginie – Governor Glenn Youngkin established his plans to fight against the trafficking of human beings at an annual conference on Tuesday, saying that the Trump administration had been a blow in the arm for the police of the state when it tries to solve the elusive problem.

Youngkin, joined by Virginia Attorney General, Jason Miyares and other state -of -the -art prosecutors, compared the application of human trafficking in the fight against transnational gangs.

“We must benefit from multi-state and federal support in order to dismantle the networks, and not only to stop an individual, we must unpack the networks,” Youngkin told a crowd of a few hundred.

The Trump administration was a boon for the efforts to apply human trafficking, said Youngkin, noting that he had met the senior officials of the Ministry of Justice to the White House after the inauguration to discuss the issue and found them receptive. Virginia’s police have since coordinated the federal government to eliminate foreign gang operations, which, according to Youngkin, overlap the human trafficking space. Youngkin used the example of gang crime inside the correctional centers, which, according to him, was the first “thread” that his team pulled.

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Governor Glenn Youngkin speaks with the first lady of Virginie Suzanne Youngkin and the Attorney General Jason Miyares at the third annual human trafficking event on Tuesday August 12, 2025. (Fox News Digital)

“We were able to get their phones (MS-13 gangs),” said Youngkin. “What we have found was a huge network short of incarcerated criminals, and once the FBI tools and the internal security tools and the state police have all been able to unleash, in the FBI regional headquarters here in the north of the Virginia, a card is mounted on the organization wall, and it is like any other that of work.”

Miyares declared in an interview with Fox News Digital that he had made requests to the Biden administration for an inter-standing working group to contact MS-13, Tren de Aragua and other gangs, but that the requests were made “on the deaf ears”. He said that, on the other hand, the Trump administration acted quickly.

“It is not only drug trafficking. The trafficking in human beings is a huge component. … within 30 days, (the Trump administration) had approved it and gave us an interagement space at the FBI field office in Manassas, a huge space where we had both the application of federal, state and local laws working together,” said Miyares.

In March, the American lawyer in eastern Virginia announced that the working group had carried out 342 arrests, “many of them having illegal status”, and that 81 had “an affiliation to transnational crime or a gang or a transnational crime”.

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President-elected Donald Trump speaks at a meeting with Republican governors while the governor of Virginie Glenn Youngkin looked at Mar-A-Lago on January 9, 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)

Violations of the trafficking in human beings are largely governed by the law on the protection of victims of the trafficking, a law adopted more than two decades ago. Incidents may involve a person forcing or forcing another person to perform acts of labor or sexuals. The authors tend to target children, women and vulnerable people, such as those living in economic difficulties, fleeing natural disasters or in psychologically difficulty.

Youngkin said that trafficking in human beings is a “poorly defined” problem.

Miyares echo these feelings, saying that human trafficking violations were “multifaceted”. He cited cases of children who have disappeared in his state and an arrest carried out in 2022 after the migrants were discovered Work illegally in a laundry room in Williamsburg.

The Attorney General Jason Miyares joined President Donald Trump during a rally in Greenbrier Farms on June 28, 2024 in Chesapeake, Virginia. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

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Virginia-Western Public Prosecutor JB McCuskey told Fox News Digital in an interview after the event that traffic cases “all look so different”, but that children with host family of his condition were particularly sensitive. He said he hoped to exploit artificial intelligence to use data between agencies to obtain a firmer understanding on the issue.

“I think that the next next step is to build these communication bridges between agencies. … Because once a child is found, (the police) must know everything immediately, and they must all be in a centralized place so that a correct decision can be taken very, very quickly,” said McCuskey. “Because these things happen quickly, and a child’s life can be ruined in a day and a half because an adult made the wrong decision based on poor intervention.”