NSS Weekly: Minnesota’s Human Trafficking Problem

Transcript

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INTRO: You are listening to North Star Stories: Voices from Where We Live, a newscast about what it means to live in Minnesota, produced by AMPERS, with support from the McKnight Foundation and the State of Minnesota.

HOST: This is North Star Stories: Voices from Where We Live. I’m Chantel SinGs.

This week, Minnesota was in the national spotlight as more than 100,000 people gathered at the Capitol in St. Paul for the No Kings rally to protest the Trump administration’s policies on immigration, war, and rising costs. Meanwhile, the Minnesota Legislature moved on several high-profile bills, including a unanimous House vote to repeal Cesar Chavez Day, which is observed on March 31, following sexual abuse and rape allegations against the former labor leader. Lawmakers also passed a 9-million-dollar funding package for supportive housing providers.

In today’s program, we take a closer look at how human trafficking operates across Minnesota. Trafficking is sometimes very glamorized or Hollywoodized. It's much more mundane. And, after 10 years of climate research, a major climate experiment in northern Minnesota has reached a turning point. But first, here are some of the stories that made the headlines around the state.

The Trump administration is escalating its fight with Minnesota over transgender athletes, filing a federal lawsuit that says the state is violating Title IX. The 45-page complaint names the Minnesota Department of Education and the Minnesota State High School League. It argues Minnesota’s policies allow transgender girls to participate in girls’ sports and female-only spaces. The filing says Minnesota was warned last fall, referred for enforcement in January, and receives more than three billion dollars in combined federal education and health funding. The Minnesota Attorney General says state law protects transgender students and that an executive order does not override state law. He adds that forcing schools to exclude transgender students would itself violate Minnesota’s civil rights law.

A judge dismissed a Department of Justice lawsuit that tried to prevent Minnesota from giving in-state tuition to undocumented students who meet certain requirements. Attorney General Keith Ellison says the judge made the right decision.

MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL KEITH ELLISON: Minnesota has the legal right to define a residency and tuition eligibility — and we will protect that right.

HOST: The U.S. District Judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying federal law does not preempt state law. In Minnesota, undocumented students can qualify for state financial aid and in-state tuition if they meet certain criteria, including attending a Minnesota high school for three years and graduating, and showing that they’ve applied for lawful immigration status. The judge also ruled the federal government misread the federal statute and lacked standing to sue the governor and attorney general, because they do not themselves control the tuition laws.

Lake Superior shipping lanes are jammed by late-season ice with a dozen vessels reportedly stuck just days after the new shipping season opened. The late-season ice is clogging Whitefish Bay and St. Mary's River, the only route into Lake Superior. This ice trouble happens most years around this time but major backups can get worse in heavy-ice years or when icebreakers are unavailable and the Coast Guard says three of its icebreakers are currently out for repair.

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In our lead story this week, renewed national attention on the Jeffrey Epstein case is also turning the spotlight back on human trafficking, including how it affects communities closer to home. Reporter Katharine DeCelle speaks with Minnesota investigators about how trafficking operates here, and why it can remain hidden in plain sight.

NEWS VOICES: Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. FBI investigation into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the anticipated Epstein files.

KATHARINE DECELLE Jeffrey Epstein used his wealth and power to run a global sex trafficking network, moving underage girls across cities, states and countries. Now, newly unsealed records are putting his name back in the headlines, revealing connections to Minnesota. Epstein emails show communications with at least two girls, one from Duluth and one from Minneapolis, who were trafficked to Epstein's homes in New York, New Mexico and overseas. While Epstein's case is making national news again, trafficking in Minnesota is happening right now. In the last three years, Minnesota's Human Trafficking Task Force received more than 1300 tips. Human trafficking is when someone—men, women or children—are exploited for sex or labor. And it doesn't always look the way people expect.

CAROLINE PALMER: Trafficking is sometimes very glamorized or Hollywoodized, and it's much more mundane.

KATHARINE DECELLE: Caroline Palmer is the Human Trafficking Prevention and Response Director with the Minnesota Department of Health.

CAROLINE PALMER: There's no real solid number of how many people are trafficked and exploited. A lot of people don't come forward.

KATHARINE DECELLE: She says trafficking in Minnesota is extremely common. Much of it happens online, where victims are advertised for sex.

CAROLINE PALMER: There doesn't seem to be, unfortunately, a lack of people who are trying to buy.

KATHARINE DECELLE: While anyone can be trafficked, in Minnesota, Indigenous women and girls are disproportionately impacted, and have been since the arrival of Christopher Columbus.

Taylor Wencel works with the state's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives office.

TAYLOR WENCEL: Columbus came here and used Indigenous people as slaves, and in his journal from 1400, stated that Indigenous girls the ages of 18 to 14 were being sold to European men in Europe at high rates because that's what they were willing to pay for exotic-looking young girls for sex. And now that's just been a reoccurring trend that we've seen just repeated up until recent day.

KATHARINE DECELLE: That history creates vulnerability and a lack of support.

TAYLOR WENCEL: Every single one of us has a vulnerability. Traffickers know that, but they hone in on somebody that has a mental health disorder, substance use or a traumatic past.

KATHARINE DECELLE: Traffickers know that vulnerable people often lack credibility from law enforcement, which allows traffickers to keep exploiting their victims. It's not stranger danger in a van. Trafficking looks like everyday life.

TAYLOR WENCEL: Usually, the perpetrator or the trafficker is somebody that you love and trust and is charismatic.

KATHARINE DECELLE: A partner, a friend, a family member.

TAYLOR WENCEL: A myth is that it's happening from a stranger, and we're never taught, “Look around closely to who we're really, actually trusting.”

KATHARINE DECELLE: It can look like a job opportunity or a place to stay or a new relationship.

TAYLOR WENCEL: Perpetrators are really good at grooming. They're going to make it seem charming and everything's safe and good. And then things start to change.

KATHARINE DECELLE: In Minnesota, the average age of entry into trafficking is just 13 years old. And it doesn't just end at adulthood.

TAYLOR WENCEL: Just because the magic of 18 does not mean that you are done being trafficked or exploited.

KATHARINE DECELLE: Taylor says that finding trafficking victims often starts when a family member reports someone missing.

TAYLOR WENCEL: I take the intake form of a family member that gives us a picture.

KATHARINE DECELLE: Taylor uses a law enforcement tool called Spotlight that scans online sex ads for missing persons.

TAYLOR WENCEL: I throw their picture into Spotlight, which has facial recognition in there to see if anyone's really being trafficked. When there's a match, I call Rachel and say, “Hey, do you have this name in any of your guys' tips?”

KATHARINE DECELLE: Rachel is Rachel Fenske of Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, who leads Minnesota's Human Trafficking Task Force.

RACHEL FENSKE: Cases come in from tips from the community members or service providers, a local law enforcement who is taking in calls like a missing person, or if they're out on a domestic or they're on a traffic stop.

KATHARINE DECELLE: She says Minnesota's trafficking cases are long term investigations that involve multiple agencies.

RACHEL FENSKE: I like to describe it as needing three people for human trafficking to exist. You need a victim/survivor, a sex buyer, and then the trafficker.

KATHARINE DECELLE: In just 2025, Minnesota's Human Trafficking Task Force received more than 400 tips, leading to finding 88 survivors, which is just a fraction of the trafficking happening in Minnesota.

RACHEL FENSKE: It's important when public is out there, and if they see something, to trust their instincts and report it.

KATHARINE DECELLE: So what does trafficking actually look like in real life? Here's Taylor.

TAYLOR WENCEL: It looks like domestic violence. It will look like a really odd relationship, maybe between two females or a male and a female, or a male and a male.

KATHARINE DECELLE: They may not be holding their belongings, or they have to look at the other person to answer questions about themselves.

TAYLOR WENCEL: They seem very uneasy. Maybe they have multiple phones, or if you know this person, or they have very expensive items, and then you know that they can't afford those items, and where are they getting those items?

KATHARINE DECELLE: This isn't happening somewhere else. It's happening next to us.

TAYLOR WENCEL: These traffickers, they drive by the cars that we drive by on the interstate every single day. They shop in the grocery stores. They're pumping the gas right next to us.

KATHARINE DECELLE: For decades, Epstein's abuse continued despite victims being seen traveling and interacting with people every day.

TAYLOR WENCEL: These traumatic things happen right under our noses every single day.

KATHARINE DECELLE: The truth about trafficking is it's not hidden. We just haven't always known how to see it. For North Star Stories, I'm Katherine Decelle.

HOST: In Minnesota, trafficking can be reported to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and the National Human Trafficking hotline is available 24/7 at 1-888-373-7888. And to help us better understand how trafficking works online and what communities can do to prevent it, we're joined now by Ashley Moore, Executive Director of Citizens Against Sex Trafficking. The organization provides tools and information to help protect people and empower communities against sexual trafficking and exploitation. Thank you so much for joining us.

ASHLEY MOORE: Thank you so much for having me.

HOST: First question for you, Ashley, is how is technology changing trafficking and exploitation in Minnesota?

ASHLEY MOORE: Specifically, the landscape that we're used to when looking at human trafficking has definitely shifted, especially more of it is taking place online. I believe now over 80% of trafficking in Minnesota has an online component to it. And so as we're looking at the narrative, being open minded to know that it's not just one picture, but that technology can play a significant role is important.

HOST: So how are traffickers using social media and other online tools?

ASHLEY MOORE: When thinking about predatory behavior and how it plays in the online space, we have to understand that there's often two types of vulnerabilities people engaging in predatory behavior are looking for. There's the material vulnerability, which I think is what most people think of unstable housing, homelessness, drug addiction, having your basic needs and wanting food, shelter, transportation, clothing. But then there's also emotional vulnerabilities, and that's where we often see the online component take place is that kids are connected more than ever. And yet we are seeing loneliness happen more than ever. So as they're creating their profiles, as they're creating their brands, as they're creating their connections online, it creates an opportunity for predators to come in, meet that emotional vulnerability and then try to meet those emotional vulnerabilities before putting unhealthy, unsafe, unwanted or illegal conditions.

HOST: Are these traffickers going after young people who are like in the streets? Or are these, you know, these can be teens and kids who are in school every day and they're just suffering, or they're lacking something in their lives that make them more vulnerable?

ASHLEY MOORE: Both. In the Twin Cities, for example, the average homeless youth is approached for sex within the first 48 hours of being on the streets. From my professional work and case work that actually was closer to the first 12 hours. So not even being a full night on the streets, people engaging in predatory behavior can sniff that out pretty quickly. But then there's those emotional needs, and that really opens up the floodgate of any person who wants to feel connected. That doesn't span to one specific demographic, that can apply to anyone at any age, but particularly for our youth.

HOST: What does trafficking look like here in Minnesota, and why is it so hard for us to spot it? How do we not know who's doing these things?

ASHLEY MOORE: In 93% of cases, for all of sexual exploitation, it is someone the victim knows, whether it's a romantic partner, family member or peer, and we're seeing with the online landscape, peer to peer exploitation is on the rise. We're seeing in the United States, 30 to 40% of people engaging in predatory behavior now are teenagers, and so we're seeing that online component really shift that landscape in a different way.

HOST: So Ashley, what can families and communities do to stop this thing before it starts?

ASHLEY MOORE: The number one thing, if there's one action step you can take to prevent exploitation, it is talking. Get comfortable with the uncomfortable. No one wants to have a sex trafficking or sexual exploitation prevention conversation. It's not an easy topic. However, if you can start early and often not just one conversation, but normalize it in your house, how do you set privacy settings? Talk to your kids. What social media apps are they on? Have them educate you. Because it can feel for parents in particular, really daunting and overwhelming, like I have to be an expert on every social media platform. You don't talk to your kids. Invite them. Have them educate you. What is TikTok? What is Discord? What is Minecraft? What gets them excited about it, then Google “safety plan for Minecraft,” “safety plan for Discord,” and be able to kind of go from there and do situational drills with your kids and normalize it.

HOST: Ashley, great advice. Thank you so much for all of the work that you do, and thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your time.

ASHLEY MOORE: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

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HOST: After the break, how the findings of a climate experiment in northern Minnesota could have implications around the world. This is North Star Stories, Voices from Where We Live, produced by AMPERS with support from the McKnight Foundation and the State of Minnesota. We’ll be right back.

AMPERS is diverse radio for Minnesota's communities. We are an association of 17 independent community radio stations in Minnesota with over 300,000 listeners. We support our stations through revenue, training and original news, arts and cultural programs. AMPERS programming is produced for and by the communities in our stations’ regions and aims to correct narratives about historically underrepresented groups. Check out what we're up to online at ampers.org, on Instagram and Facebook.

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HOST: You are listening to North Star Stories, I’m Chantel SinGs. In other news from across the state:
Researchers at Isle Royale, a remote island national park located in the northwest of Lake Superior, say the island is seeing fewer moose and plenty of wolves. AMPERS member station WTIP in Grand Marais reports that moose numbers have fallen sharply from their peak of about 2,000 animals in 2010, down to the low hundreds. Wolves were reintroduced in 2018 to curb over browsing. Researchers now say the population is around 30, and the animals appear well‑fed, with a high rate of moose kills observed during this winter’s aerial survey. Dr. Rolf Peterson, one of the researchers from Michigan Technological University, told WTIP—

DR PETERSON: Moose are low and wolves are high, and that's the way it's been for several years, and that's probably going to continue. So, it's, uh, moose are hitting a low level that we haven't seen for, or probably only seen once before in the last half century. So, um, yeah, they'll, they'll bring the whole situation into uncharted territory, perhaps, depending on what the future is.

HOST: Scientists will spend the next two months analyzing data, with a full report on 2026 wolf and moose population estimates expected in May.

In health news from the Grand Rapids area, Grand Itasca Hospital has retained its designation as a Level Three trauma center. The hospital was redesignated by the Minnesota Department of Health after an outside review of its resources and ability to care for trauma patients. Minnesota’s trauma system has four levels, and it is designed to make sure seriously injured patients are taken to hospitals equipped to treat their specific injuries. There are about two dozen Level Three and Level Four trauma hospitals in northern Minnesota, with Level One centers in Duluth, Grand Forks, and Fargo.

Next, after a decade of manipulating a peat bog to simulate Earth’s climate future, researchers in northern Minnesota are using what they discovered to better understand what lies ahead for Minnesotans and for the world. Reporter Maija Hecht has the story.

MAIJA HECHT: Deep in Minnesota's North Woods, at the Marcell Experimental Forest, just north of Grand Rapids, scientists have spent years running an experiment that looks straight out of a science fiction movie. Hovering above spongy peatland moss hidden among black spruce trees, 12 giant greenhouse-like structures hum with HVAC and monitoring technology. This Department of Energy-backed experiment called the SPRUCE Project, is short for Spruce and Peatlands Under Changing Environments. It's one of the largest climate change experiments in the world.

DR RANDY KOLKA: It’s like walking into, well, put it this way, here's one fourth grade girl’s thought on what she thought SPRUCE looked like.

MAIJA HECHT: Soil research scientist Dr Randy Kolka has been working with peatland ecosystems in Marcell since the ‘90s.

DR RANDY KOLKA: And she said it looks like spacecraft had landed and laid little spacecraft eggs in the bog, and the spacecraft eggs were just hatched, and they're just emerging from the bog. And that's what it does look like up there. It's kind of a space age looking place with these enclosures, and it looks like these enclosures are ready to take off.

MAIJA HECHT: Each of those spacecraft, like enclosures, contain a 12-meter-wide plot of moss shrubs and trees, and are heated by about two, four and seven degrees Celsius above regular outdoor temperatures. At midnight on the New Year, the experiment came to an end and began the deconstruction and analysis phase.

DR RANDY KOLKA: December 31 New Year's Eve was a really bitter, kind of a bittersweet day for all of us.

MAIJA HECHT: After 10 years of warming the bog and raising carbon dioxide in some plots, scientists are now analyzing what happened to this ecosystem and what it could mean for a warming world.

DR RANDY KOLKA: Boreal peatlands, they only occupy about 3% of terrestrial area, the planet, but they have about a third of the terrestrial carbon. So they're really disproportionately important from a carbon storage point of view.

MAIJA HECHT: According to Kolka, as global temperatures rise, peatlands store less carbon.

DR RANDY KOLKA: And potentially, they even flipped to becoming sources of carbon back to the atmosphere. And if and when that switch happens to a great degree, they will not only be not helping us clean the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses, they'll be sources to the atmosphere, you know, exacerbating climate change.

MAIJA HECHT: So what is the threshold when peatlands stop soaking up carbon and begin releasing it back into the atmosphere, potentially exacerbating climate change? This is the question scientists hope to answer with the SPRUCE Project.

DR RANDY KOLKA: Some of the most important implications of the SPRUCE experiment are going to be coming in the next three to five years.

MAIJA HECHT: Some of those implications are already visible inside the warmest enclosure, representing an extreme future warming scenario. There is a visible shift in plant communities. Blueberries bloom earlier, shading out the carbon-storing powerhouse sphagnum moss. These changes are just the beginning of disruption below the surface, such as, Kolka said, loss of carbon sequestration potential and higher downstream mercury concentrations in the food chain. Researchers say the data will improve the models used to forecast climate change, both globally and locally, for Northern Minnesotans.

DR RANDY KOLKA: Up until recently, a lot of those predictions didn't even consider wetlands or peatlands as part of the models that develop those predictions. So being able to refine those predictions is really what SPRUCE is all about.

STEFAN LIESS: Yes, so roughly speaking, a climate model is just a large-scale weather forecast model, and that gives us decisions for the next 10 days at most.

MAIJA HECHT: Stefan Liess is a climate scientist at the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership.

STEFAN LIESS: But now with climate models, we can extend that to the next 100 years and longer.

MAIJA HECHT: Lee says that when it comes to including data from the SPRUCE Project—

STEFAN LIESS: Coming from a global perspective, where we know that the climate is getting warmer, temperatures getting higher, and then also with this, climate is getting more volatile. More volatile. Every kind of observation helps us in the modeling world to identify what is the natural outcome of those changes.

MAIJA HECHT: At the University of Minnesota, climate scientists like Liess are using those global models to show how warming may play out locally, county by county.

STEFAN LIESS: So for each of the Minnesota counties, we have now results on our website, and there we produce outcomes also for the future for the next hundred years.

MAIJA HECHT: North central Minnesota has already warmed faster than the state as a whole, according to the climate adaptation partnership. Back at the Marcell Experimental Forest, Dr Randy Kolka says he and his collaborators remain curious about how rising temperatures will affect local lands and waters.

DR RANDY KOLKA: So now that the SPRUCE treatments are turned off, now some of the best science is still to come.

MAIJA HECHT: In the meantime, the SPRUCE Project site remains open to curious public who would like to see how climate research is happening in their own backyard.

DR RANDY KOLKA: It’s a spectacle that is something you've never seen before and you'll never see again. Then if you'd really like to see it for real, email me and we'll set up a field trip sometime this spring, early summer.

MAIJA HECHT: Maija Hecht for North Star Stories.

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HOST: While the SPRUCE Project was collecting data, events like extreme heat waves, atmospheric rivers and flooding, once considered rare are now becoming more common in the news. To talk about how these changes are affecting our daily lives, we're joined now by Sarah Rudolf, who is the Midwest Program Firector at the Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy, or CEED. Minnesota-based CEED builds partnerships and coalitions to support environmental justice, climate Justice and energy democracy. Sarah, how are you?

SARAH RUDOLF: I'm well. Thank you for having me, Chantel

HOST: Thank you so much for joining us. Can you help us understand how climate change is affecting vulnerable communities?

SARAH RUDOLF: Right now, climate change is really leading to more extreme weather events, and so things like the snow storm that's going to happen that's kind of out of season. More extreme temperatures during the summer and winter lead to increased reliance on HVAC systems and utilities. They also lead to other kinds of impacts on air pollution and water availability. And so those communities that already face challenges with public health, not having as many resources for income, for paying for food, utilities, housing, et cetera, are increasingly affected by those changes.

HOST: And so Sarah, your organization talks a lot about climate and environmental justice. So how would you explain those ideas to listeners?

SARAH RUDOLF: So environmental justice is just the idea that no group should be affected more than another by environmental conditions. And so one example of this is we've seen that lower cost housing is often located near freeways, which yields to greater exposure to air pollution, and oftentimes yields higher asthma rates among those populations.

HOST: So what would help communities adapt and to stay safe, Sarah?

SARAH RUDOLF: Well, we believe in a key tenant of environmental justice is that the people who are most affected are the ones who have the greatest ability to create solutions. And so one of the things that we really work towards is creating opportunities for those most affected to participate in decision making processes around environmental policies, regulations and how those are handled locally.

HOST: Anything that you would like to tell the listeners about your specific area that, you know, people should look forward to?

SARAH RUDOLF: One of the things that we're really working to support is our partners who are working to address the HERC incinerator in Minneapolis. So there's a hunger strike coming up, and I think that you know whether or not you choose to participate in the hunger strike, but it's important to learn about the impacts of the incinerator on the community around it, and what that means for the health of the communities that live there.

HOST: Sarah, do you mind expanding a little bit on the HERC incinerator?

SARAH RUDOLF: The idea is that the presence of the incinerator has caused harm to local residents by creating pollution, air pollution that's affecting the health and well-being of the communities nearby, and so those residents have faced increased asthma rates and all kinds of health challenges as a result. And the advocacy community believes that it should be shut down to improve the health of those folks who live there, and also just address air quality in the city in general.

HOST: Well, Sarah, any final thoughts?

SARAH RUDOLF: I want to encourage everyone to continue to be on the lookout for their neighbors, learn the power of knowing our neighbors and helping in community care, and so want to continue to encourage people to do that.

HOST: That's all the time we have for now. But thank you so much for all the work you do.

SARAH RUDOLF: Thank you for having me.

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HOST: And don't wait too long if you’re planning a summer getaway. Reservations are now open for summer tours at three Minnesota state parks. Blue Mounds State Park, in southwestern Minnesota, offers prairie and bison tours with possible views of the herd. In southeastern Minnesota, Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park has scenic, wild caving and new karst landscape tours. And in northeastern Minnesota, tours of the Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine are returning after flood repairs. Tours start in May and run through October. Find more information at mndnr.gov.

This is it for today’s program. If you missed any part of today’s newscast, you can find this and past episodes at AMPERS.org, or listen to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. You can also get North Star Stories Daily on our website or check your favorite station's schedule. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back next week with more stories and voices from the North Star State.

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OUTRO: North Star Stories is produced by AMPERS, diverse radio for Minnesota's communities, with support from the McKnight Foundation and the State of Minnesota. Online at AMPERS.org.