Two Department of Homeland Security officers have been accused of paying for sexual favors from a group of human trafficking victims whom they were supposed to be "rescuing."
Today's News Herald, a local newspaper based in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, reports that two DHS officials who were investigating sex trafficking at massage parlors in Lake Havasu City and Bullhead City both paid those businesses for sex from their employees.
"The agents used marked bills to pay for sex acts offered by women at each establishment, with stated services ranging from $60 to $160," Today's News Herald reports. "The agents received sexual services from women at each location."
The DHS operation eventually led to the arrest of seven suspects in the area on sex trafficking charges, but charges against two suspects have already been dropped because the two DHS officers accused of soliciting sexual favors have so far refused to testify.
Lake Havasu City attorney Brad Rideout, an attorney representing one of the suspects arrested in the operation, has now filed a lawsuit against DHS asking for more information about the officers' actions.
"It is unclear how an ICE officer having sexual relations with human trafficking victims in Mohave County, Arizona, protects the nation from terrorist attack or secures the borders," he wrote in a court filing.
Rideout separately told the Daily Beast that "to solve a crime of victims who were being forced to have sex, the officers decided to have sex with them" and said that "there seems to be no limits on their activities and there seems to be no boundaries."