Reclaim, Rebuild — and Get the Definitions Right

This week, the Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task Force announced the results of “Operation Reclaim and Rebuild,” a weeklong statewide effort conducted January 25–31, 2026. According to the task force, the operation “recovered” 156 adults and 14 minors, arrested 328 men for solicitation, and arrested 71 suspected traffickers/exploiters, totaling 611 arrests.

Let’s start with what deserves to be said plainly: if 14 children were pulled out of exploitation, that is worth applauding. Full stop. A minor cannot consent to commercial sex. When kids are being bought and sold, we should be united in one priority: immediate safety, long-term support, and real accountability for those who harm them.

And yet, even in a moment where the public wants to celebrate a clean moral victory, we have to stay honest about something the anti-trafficking field keeps stumbling over:

The distinctions are not clear — and the lack of clarity is not harmless.

When “Anti-Trafficking” Messaging Blurs into a Dragnet

In the press release language, “Operation Reclaim and Rebuild” frames its mission as rescuing victims, prosecuting traffickers, and “disrupting the demand” by “targeting their customers.” That’s the familiar “end demand” script: arrest the buyers, dry up the market, and trafficking disappears.

But the same announcement also describes “demand operations” addressing “sidewalk prostitution,” and “cyber detectives who posed as vulnerable teenagers” interacting with suspects online.

Here’s the problem: the public can’t tell what’s being counted.

• “Recovered” adults are described as “victims,” and later, as “156 women” connected to services.

• Meanwhile, hundreds of solicitation arrests are presented as part of an anti-trafficking win.

But in real life, those categories don’t neatly map onto “trafficking” vs “not trafficking.” Adult commercial sex can include force, fraud, or coercion — and it can also include adult consensual sex work and survival economies shaped by poverty, homelessness, addiction, immigration precarity, and discrimination. When the announcement uses trafficking language as an umbrella for everything happening in the sex trade, the public is left with one takeaway: all commercial sex equals trafficking.

That’s not “clarity.” That’s a slogan.

“Carceral Care” and the Pipeline Nobody Likes to Talk About

SWOP Behind Bars has been documenting what happens when law enforcement-led “rescue” becomes the entry point to services: arrest first, help later — if you comply.

In their analysis of the “architecture of carceral care,” they describe the through-line bluntly: “Arrest is still the entry point,” services become conditional, and the machinery stays intact even when the branding gets softer.

And once someone is caught in that machinery, the consequences don’t end when the headline does. SWOP Behind Bars details how even minor charges or dropped cases can trigger cascading harms: barriers to housing and employment, family court complications, court fines and program fees, probation traps, and trauma amplified by raids and public shaming.

Then comes the part the public rarely sees: the churn. In another entry, SWOP Behind Bars explains how the system pressures people into pleas — not necessarily because the case is strong, but because the system runs on throughput, leverage, and “clean statistical wins,” even in cases with no evidence of trafficking and involving consensual adult sex.

This is how a sting becomes an ecosystem: policing, courts, mandated programs, nonprofit partnerships, grant narratives — all fed by volume.

The End-Demand Trap: Big Numbers, Blunt Tools

The task force announcement includes a sweeping moral claim: “Purchasing commercial sex is illegal and buying sex adds to the exploitation of those involved.” The District Attorney is quoted saying buyers fuel “an industry built on violence and human suffering,” and that the office will pursue buyers with a “relentless commitment.”

It’s understandable rhetoric — and in cases involving minors or coercion, it’s morally coherent.

But when that rhetoric is used as a blanket framework for all adult commercial sex, it becomes policy fog. It encourages operations where “success” is measured in arrest totals, and where adult people in the sex trade become raw material for a trafficking narrative — even when trafficking is not proven, charged, or present.

SWOP Behind Bars’ reporting on sting-style operations highlights the risk: highly produced enforcement spectacles that generate headlines, but don’t clearly document confirmed trafficking outcomes or durable victim-service results.

So the question isn’t “Should we hold exploiters accountable?” Of course we should.

The question is: Are we building systems that actually reduce exploitation — or are we building systems that expand surveillance and criminalization while calling it rescue?

What Rethink Trafficking Wants to See Next

If California wants the public to trust these operations — and if agencies want community partners to stand with them — we need a higher standard than celebratory totals.

Here’s what “reclaim and rebuild” should require:

1. Clear definitions in public reporting.
   Separate: minors, confirmed trafficking (force/fraud/coercion), suspected trafficking, adult consensual sex work, and non-trafficking-related offenses. If the distinctions aren’t clear, the public story shouldn’t pretend they are.

2. Outcome transparency — not just enforcement metrics.
   How many minors were stabilized into long-term care? How many adults accepted voluntary services? How many trafficking cases were charged and prosecuted? “Connected with services” is not an outcome — it’s a press-release phrase.

3. Less theater, more prevention.
   If we can mobilize 80+ agencies for arrests, we can mobilize serious money for housing, treatment on demand, legal aid, record relief, and survivor-led outreach — the boring infrastructure that actually reduces vulnerability. The “human cost” of arrest-first models is already well documented.

4. A firewall between child exploitation response and adult moral policing.
   Don’t launder broad crackdowns through the moral urgency of protecting children. Kids deserve protection that isn’t used as a banner for widening nets around adults.

We can hold two truths at once:

• Rescuing minors is a moral emergency and a public good.

• Blurring trafficking with adult commercial sex — and celebrating arrest volume as “victim-centered” — is how we recreate harm inside systems that claim to end it.

If we want fewer people exploited tomorrow, we have to stop confusing “tough” with “effective,” and stop confusing “awareness month operations” with a coherent, survivor-centered strategy.

Reclaim, rebuild — yes.

But define it. Measure it. Prove it.