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Operation Underground Railroad Rescues Nine Girls Being Pimped by Their High School Teacher

May 01, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Tim Ballard, founder and CEO of Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R), joined Glenn in studio, along with colleague Matt Osborne, to discuss one of their latest rescue operations in South America. Osborne, formally with the CIA and State Department, led the operation that resulted in nine girls being rescued and the arrest of their high school physical education teacher who was pimping them out. Matt shared the harrowing details surrounding O.U.R.'s rescue mission.

Become a modern day abolitionist by visiting OurRescue.org to get informed and make a donation.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program...

GLENN: Operation Underground Railroad. Tim Ballard is joining us with an update on some kids that have recently been rescued, thanks to you and this audience. Thank you for your support on trying to end slavery and free some children. Hi, Tim, how are you?

TIM: Hi, great. Thanks for having us back.

GLENN: So can you talk about the operation that you just did?

TIM: Yes, we just got back recently. It was amazing. We brought your own chief investigator with us, so he could be eyes on. And I'm lucky to bring Matt Osborne, formally of the CIA and state department, and he led that operation. And some amazing things happened. And I'm going to let Matt tell you what they are.

MATT: Thank you. So, again, thanks to your audience. Unbelievable. The resources we were able to go down to South America, as specific as we'll be now. In the coming days, we can talk a little bit more. There I believe in the small little place near the Amazon, there was a professor, a high school physical education teacher pimping out nine of his students. Both in positive ways. Hey, if you do this, you get good grades, a little bit of money. And in negative ways. If you don't do this. If you don't allow these men to do whatever they want, I will tell your parents, I will do all of these things. So we were so blessed. We went down. We had our aftercare team in place. Minutes before the operation, operation underground railroad sent a prayer request out to all of our supporters, many probably in this audience, and we had a miracle. Not only were all of the girls rescued, ten of them total, two traffickers arrested, including this teacher, Jason will talk a little bit more about it next week. But our aftercare team not only was on the ground, they were able to go in with the South American countries child protective services equivalent. Be there, and minutes after the rescue, they stayed all afternoon, all evening, all night with the girls.

GLENN: That doesn't happen.

MATT: Doesn't happen.

GLENN: The worst thing about your job, besides having to see what you guys see, you never get the satisfaction of seeing the kids rescued, them knowing that you're a good guy. They see you guys being hauled away in handcuffs, and they just think you're a dirt bag.

TIM: And oftentimes they're scoffing. Yeah, you get yours. No, we were here for you.

MATT: Or spit on you as we're on the ground.

TIM: It's tough. It's tough.

GLENN: So this time, they did. I mean, you got to see the joy in many of them. How did you find out about a teacher doing this?

MATT: So we're very fortunate to have great relationships with the federal governments in several countries through the U.S. embassy, through Homeland Security. They, in this case, said we don't have the resources to go to the outer reaches of our country, but we will give you the green light. Your operation underground railroad operatives, go and see what you find. We sent three Americans about a month or two just in this area, they took an Amazon river cruise, they got the word around that they were looking for a certain type of product and one person led to another who led to this teacher. Real miracle that we were able to find it.

GLENN: So this was a fishing trip, really. I mean, you go on -- I mean, I've seen you do this, like, in Bangkok and in Haiti where you go where the sex trafficking is happening. But this, again, you only found that teacher not from a tip but just from a fishing expedition.

MATT: That's correct. To be on a jump team and to go where this need is, and that's how this happened.

TIM: There's places in the world that are so dark, the darkest corners of the planet where kids are being held with zero hope that anyone's going to find them. Their own governments are saying we don't work up there. And they know that. So we become the only hope. Because we will go into the places that even governments won't go or can't go. And to just have that hope out there for those kids who are locked up.

GLENN: Do you have any idea -- did the parents or did the school have any idea any of this stuff was going on?

MATT: The school said they did not. The professor was fired three hours after this news hit. He is no longer -- he's in jail now. They claim that they did not know anything. The parents from what we get, half the parents claim to have no idea and then half the parents now in the interviews, there are a couple of single families, single parent families who said I was afraid something like this would happen. But our -- aftercare team gave them training, anti-trafficking training in the days following this operation that happened about nine days ago or so.

GLENN: So what happened -- I just saw a video this morning, and it happened a while back. I was surprised. Pat and I watched it this morning. Shocked we didn't know about it. A woman, a girl, lives in Ohio. She was I think 17 at the time. She was raped by a guy who -- these two girls met, I'm not sure exactly how it came down. But her friend Periscoped this rape. And instead of putting the phone down to help, she just Periscoped the whole thing and was responding to the comments, and she was, like, getting so many likes, and she was just -- I mean, it was crazy. And you see this now 18-year-old girl on her little girl bed that all of our daughters had growing up, and she's just -- she's vacant. She's just gone. What happens to these girls who were used by a teacher like this? And the parents. Do the parents get help?

MATT: Some of them will have a steep trip back. Remember, I was the bad guy, I was with them for about 30 minutes while the deal was going down. I am very positive that these girls will still be able to come back. They seem very full of life, they seemed a little bit shy, a little bit scared of us, but we talked about their dreams, we talked about what they wanted to do. Talked about wanting to be travel agents, tour guides, public administration. So I have a feeling, especially because we have this great relationship now. Our aftercare with the prosecutor, with their child protective services equivalent. We will be in touch with them in the weeks and months to come making sure that their road is paved.

GLENN: Tim, people are saying why aren't you doing stuff in America? Well, there are things that happen that you can't necessarily talk about because -- I mean, we can't even give you the name of the country on this particular thing. There are things that are happening right around America that you don't necessarily want to talk about.

But beyond that, these -- a lot of these places, especially over in Asia, the guys who are doing this are Americans and one of them was a teacher.

TIM: Yeah.

GLENN: That was caught.

TIM: Absolutely. We do work in the United States. We don't talk as much about it, but we do. And even when we don't, we target those Americans. Look, these are the people that live next door to us, but their inhibitions are down when they're traveling for sex in Asia or Latin America. We get them there and when they do, they don't come home. They rot in a foreign prison, and our kids are safe. So working over there is protecting our kids here.

GLENN: Because it gets worse and worse and worse when they go on these sex vacations.

TIM: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: You can't turn it off when you come home. Can you talk about that teacher that was here in America that you guys busted?

TIM: Yeah. I mean, this was a teacher that, you know, was teaching middle schoolkids and taking all of his vacations over in Asia and exploiting kids and people there. And we were able to catch him because he had just an enormous collection of child pornography, including stuff that he had produced. And there he is doing -- living these two lives, and then he's with our kids teaching them French or whatever he's teaching. It's just -- we have to root these guys out.

PAT: Are these guys generally married or single?

TIM: Both. That doesn't seem to deter them, if they're married.

PAT: Jeez.

TIM: Yeah.

GLENN: We just lost two operatives over in the Middle East that have been working with us to save moms and children from ISIS. Dads usually killed and then mom and the girls are taken and used as sex slaves or worse.

How dangerous is it for you guys to go out? I mean, you're not dealing with ISIS, per se. But how dangerous is this for you guys?

TIM: I think it's -- it's very dangerous. I mean, we're -- because our whole job, we call ourself operation underground railroad because we're trying to get inspiration from what that group did and what they did was filter the darkness. Everything we do whether it's online or physically and the more dangerous part, obviously, is the physical infiltration of these black markets. Matt ask his team, they were infiltrating people who were selling kids. This is -- we're disturbing their economic flow, their reputations.

GLENN: In some countries, that shall remain nameless, you know, the cartels will come after you here.

TIM: Oh, yeah, there's operations that we don't -- that we've been on that we've conducted that have been successful that no one even knows have been done. There's times we won't announce anything and we wish everyone can know what we're doing all the time and we can't because we tap into something like that.

GLENN: If you want to become involved, I urge you to go to OurRescue.org. That's OurRescue.org. Even a $5 monthly pledge goes a long way. You know, we all think that oh, you know, gee, if I were there, I would have stopped slavery. Really? Because slavery is a lot bigger than it was during the slave trade that we all read about in history books. A lot bigger. And are we doing anything? Just like in the olden days, people didn't want to look at it. They didn't want to think about it, they think wanted to put it out of their mind. Become an abolitionist. Join us today. OurRescue.org. Thanks, guys.

TIM: Appreciate it.

A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Faith, family, and freedom—The forgotten core of conservatism

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.