72 Arrested, 29 Human Trafficking Victims Rescued Across Mississippi: Officials

The effort, dubbed ‘Operation Guardian Force,’ took place between July 14 and July 29, the state attorney general’s office says.

A man in handcuffs in a file photo. Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

Mississippi’s attorney general announced on Thursday that it carried out a statewide operation in July that resulted in 72 arrests and the rescue of 29 human trafficking victims.

In “Operation Guardian Force,” Attorney General Lynn Finch said in a statement that officials across the state targeted “criminals who traffic people” and took “drugs off the streets.”

The operation took place from July 14 to July 29, according to the office. It included 400 federal, state, and local law enforcement officials who coordinated arrests, warrants, and victims’ services.

It also included a “sex offender compliance check to locate and identify sex offender registry absconders,” while about two-dozen local offices were involved in the effort, said the attorney general’s office.

The attorney general’s office did not provide details on the recovery of the trafficking victims or more information about the operation. Her office also did not disclose details of the charges.

“I am proud of the dedicated investigators and prosecutors from the Attorney General’s Office, as well as our partners in local, state, and federal law enforcement, for their work on this operation and every day to keep our communities safe,” Finch added in her statement. She also praised the Trump administration for providing assistance in the effort.

The Department of Transportation said that in the United States, the National Human Trafficking Hotline in 2023 “received a total of 30,162 substantive signals nationwide and received reports of 9,619 potential human trafficking cases referencing 16,999 potential victims.”

Meanwhile, that same year, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children logged more than 18,400 reports of possible child sex trafficking incidents, while 4,800—or nearly 17 percent—of the 28,800 cases of children who were reported missing in 2023 likely were subjected to some form of sex trafficking, according to the agency.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that around 1,900 people were referred to U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country on human trafficking charges in the fiscal year 2022, or an increase of 26 percent from 2012’s figures. The number of individuals prosecuted for the crime also more than doubled between 2012 and 2022, from 805 to 1,656 people, it added.

Outside the United States, a United Nations report released in December 2024 said that human trafficking has risen sharply in recent years. In 2022, the latest year for which data is widely available, the number of known victims worldwide rose to 25 percent compared to “2019 pre-pandemic figures,” said the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Global Report on Trafficking in Persons at the time.

“The number of detected child victims increased by 31 per cent and represented 38 per cent of all victims detected. Girls were increasingly detected in several regions, including parts of Europe. Boys are typically detected in forced labor and forced criminality, while girls are mostly trafficked for sexual exploitation,” the office said.

The effort in Mississippi comes about a month and a half after the Department of Justice and the FBI announced that an investigation in Texas led to the arrests of 244 alleged online child-sex predators. The nationwide operation also resulted in the rescue of 115 children, according to the Justice Department.

Reuters contributed to this report.