As Michelle trudged along the brush somewhere near McAllen, Texas, she says a white truck pulled up alongside her and her fellow travelers. Michelle knew that the United States Border Patrol drove white trucks.
The armed strangers in the white truck began to yell at them. “Get in! Get in!” The strangers covered the travelers’ faces with black hoods, tied their hands, and told them to remain silent. This was not the U.S. Border Patrol.
Human trafficking, defined by the U.S. Department of Justice as “the exploitation of a person for labor, services, or commercial sex,” is one of the many dangers that immigrants coming into the United States face. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “between 200,000 and 400,000 Central American migrants are smuggled through Mexico each year to the United States alone.” It adds that it has found “a pattern of small groups targeting women for sexual exploitation.”
The Polaris Project, a nonprofit focused on ending human trafficking in the U.S., noted in a report that “immigrants are extremely vulnerable to both sex and labor trafficking.” The report ranks “escort services” and “residential commercial sex” among the top 10 types of trafficking against people coming to the U.S. from Latin America.
Michelle understood there would be risks in coming to the U.S., but she says she was desperate to leave her home country of Honduras in order to escape an older man who had become obsessed with her. She also wanted to study computer science in the U.S.
After a failed attempt to get into the U.S. a month earlier, Michelle, 19 at the time, had finally made it to Texas, along with a friend she had met in a detention center in Mexico when she was deported the first time, in August 2021. According to her affidavit, Michelle was headed to Austin to live with her aunt, who had supported the family in Honduras financially for years. She didn’t tell anyone she was leaving, not wanting to cause any stress for her family. Only when she arrived in Mexico did she tell her aunt of her plans.
The next two weeks were a blur of rooms for Michelle. Sometimes a room in a mobile home. Sometimes a room in a hotel. But always with a guard at the exits and no cell phone access.
The country that had represented safety and freedom would not be the dream she had imagined. Michelle had been kidnapped. Blindfolded and scared, she says the truck rumbled along. The truck came to a stop, and the men ushered her indoors. They removed her blindfold inside of what appeared to be a mobile home. Through the window, she could see other mobile homes.
“We didn’t know why we were there or what their intention was with us,” Michelle recalled.
Then the bosses arrived. “I want her, her, and her,” they said.
Five women, including Michelle and her friend, were put into the bosses’ truck, she says. The men drove Michelle to a hotel and told her to shower. Michelle, who asked the Chronicle to use her middle name for fear that traffickers might seek revenge, says she didn’t have a cell phone and a guard stood watch at the door at all times.
“How are you feeling?” one of the men asked Michelle. She says she told him she was tired from all the walking.
“I’m not going to tire you out much longer,” the man responded in a mocking tone.
He began to try to have sex with her, she says. Michelle fought back. He beat her. Blood poured from her nose and lip. “I’ve never experienced anything so intense in my entire life,” Michelle says. She was living a nightmare.
“I’ve Been Kidnapped”
Michelle says the next two weeks were a blur of rooms. Sometimes a room in a mobile home. Sometimes a room in a hotel. But always with a guard at the exits and no cell phone access. The traffickers forced her to snort a white powder, according to her affidavit. She was always hungry. The same boss repeatedly raped her, she says.
“Why do you do it?” she asked.
She says he told her explicitly that it’s easier to be with people “as weak as you, the illegals.”
At one point, she says she realized that one of the other women had managed to hide a cell phone. The woman lent it to Michelle, who snuck into the bathroom and began to type.
“I’ve been kidnapped,” Michelle wrote to Elizabeth, her aunt in Austin. “Please help me. Do not write me back, because this is not my cell phone.”
Elizabeth, who asked the Chronicle to use her middle name for the same reasons as her niece, contacted police in Austin, Houston, and McAllen. The Austin and Houston police informed her that the case was out of their jurisdiction. She says McAllen police told her she needed to show up in person.
Elizabeth was familiar with the trauma and danger of immigrating from Honduras to the U.S. In 2015, she fled an abusive husband and left her children with her mother (her children fled to the U.S. in 2018 and now live with her), according to her affidavit. She, along with Michelle’s mother, had also been abused as children by their grandfather. Michelle’s mother killed herself when Michelle was 8 years old.
The same day that Michelle texted her, Elizabeth says she received an anonymous call. “Are you Michelle’s aunt?” the person asked. She could hear Michelle “cry out” in the background, according to Elizabeth’s affidavit. The man told her to expect a call in the coming days and hung up the phone, she says.
The aunt and niece continued to text each other. Michelle told her aunt that she was being forced to have sex. Elizabeth found two detectives to help with the case. She asked Michelle to look for information, like an address, that she could find to share with them, but Michelle could not get near the windows to determine her location.
Suddenly, the messages from Michelle stopped. A different woman’s phone had been discovered. Michelle saw the men take the woman into a separate room and heard them as they abused her physically, verbally, and sexually. Michelle was too afraid to use the cell phone.
Moving Forward
Eventually, the men found out that Michelle had been using a cell phone, but she says she convinced them that she had only called her aunt to inform her that she was safe in McAllen.
The men took Michelle and a few other girls to a hotel. They told her that they would be releasing her and had her call Elizabeth to tell her the ransom would be $8,000. Shortly thereafter, the women’s faces were covered and they were put in another car, she says. When their faces were uncovered, all Michelle saw was brush. The group, led by one of the men, walked for five days without food.
Finally, a car came to pick them up. Michelle got in. They were taken to a new location, given shirts and shorts, and told to bathe. The men called Elizabeth in the afternoon to tell her to head to Houston. Fifteen minutes later, they texted a location.
Elizabeth arrived first. Twenty minutes later another car showed up, and Elizabeth was told to get in the front seat. She says she handed over the money, and they began to count the money. She looked into the back of the car and saw a terrified Michelle. Apparently satisfied with the money, the men released Michelle and her friend.
Elizabeth brought Michelle, who she described as very skinny, dehydrated, and bruised, to a hospital in Austin. Michelle had been threatened by the men, who promised to come after her if she told anyone about what had happened. The boss who had been abusing Michelle informed her that he had family in Austin and could easily find her.
“The legal argument is that once something like this happens to you, your life has changed forever. Your mental state has changed forever. Your health has changed forever.” – Immigration attorney Ashley Morris
The hospital called the police. When law enforcement arrived, Michelle could barely speak, but, since then, she has been helping the Texas Attorney General’s Office with their case against the traffickers. The Texas Attorney General’s Office declined to comment because the case remains active, but, according to Elizabeth’s affidavit, one of the men involved in the sex trafficking operation has been arrested.
Ashley Morris, the pair’s immigration attorney, says she was shocked at the brazenness of the kidnapping. She added that Elizabeth’s care for Michelle represents a trend. Her clients often care for others who are not their biological children.
Michelle’s kidnapping opened a possibility for Michelle and Elizabeth qualifying for some immigration status. Morris immediately thought Michelle had a clear case for a T visa, which protects victims of severe forms of human trafficking. To qualify for the T visa, she needed to show that she was in the U.S. on account of the trafficking.
“The legal argument is that once something like this happens to you, your life has changed forever. Your mental state has changed forever. Your health has changed forever,” Morris said.
Michelle received a certification from law enforcement, agreeing that she was a victim of human trafficking and that she has been assisting with the investigation. Her T visa application was approved in November 2023. Three years from that date she will be eligible to apply for permanent residency.
Elizabeth, a victim of extortion, has the opportunity to apply for a U visa, which is granted to people who cooperate with a law enforcement investigation of certain serious crimes. She received a bona fide determination, meaning she qualifies for the basic requirements of a U visa, though her application has not yet been approved. There are 246,000 pending applications for U visas. The status leaves Elizabeth vulnerable, as some people with bona fide determination have been detained under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Morris said the T and U visa processes can be “very intimidating and disappointing” for potential applicants, because it requires sharing personal information, continued cooperation with law enforcement, and the process can take a long time. But it can also significantly help law enforcement agencies.
“It can give people the courage to cooperate with law enforcement – a huge policy consideration that I would hope more law enforcement agencies, as well as ICE, would consider when they start taking enforcement action to meet their quotas,” she said.
The Trump administration’s immigration processing apparatus takes a less sympathetic view.
“The U and T visa programs are intended to help bone fide alien crime victims and aid active law enforcement investigations,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser told the Chronicle in an email. “However, the effectiveness is questionable given the gross mismanagement and corruption that’s allowed these programs to be hijacked by fraudsters and criminal aliens, their attorneys, and corrupt law enforcement. Local law enforcement agencies ‘rubber stamping’ visa certifications have given bad actors every incentive to fabricate victim stories. There’s no end to the number of unscrupulous immigration attorneys willing to help aliens file meritless petitions to delay deportation and obtain employment authorization.”
He added that U visas are capped at 10,000 annually by statute (not including derivative relatives), but that from FY 2017 to FY 2025 (Q2), USCIS received 266,293 principal U visa petitions. “This means that if all U visa filings stopped today, it would take over 20 years adjudicate [sic] the cases in the backlog. Since FY 2009, USCIS has seen a 2,013% increase in pending cases,” Tragesser stated.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth has not recuperated the ransom money. She says both she and Michelle are in counseling, trying to heal from the abuse they have faced.
“[We’re] just trying to move forward,” Elizabeth said. “Although, yes, it’s very hard.”
Austin-based SAFE operates a 24/7 confidential SAFEline for victims of abuse, including sex trafficking: Call 512/267-7233, or text “SAFE” to 737/888-7233.
This article appears in August 29 • 2025.