Karla Jacinto was only 12 when she was forced to work in a Mexican brothel.

She remembers how powerless she felt the first day she was sold to “clients” in Guadalajara.

“I cried, I screamed, I begged for help, and nobody listened to me until it got to the point where my feelings started to shut down,” she said. “And all I did at that moment was close my eyes after seeing the first client, the second, the third, until they became tens.”

Three months earlier, she had been lured by a 22-year-old who promised her love, marriage and the fairy-tale life she never thought possible as a little girl abused by her family. She moved in with him days later, unaware he would force her into prostitution for the next four years.

By her own estimates, she had been raped tens of thousands of times by the time she escaped at age 16.

Jacinto is now an activist in her early 30s helping trafficking survivors like her. She’s sharing her story as part of a campaign to highlight fears that the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Mexico could lead to a rise in human trafficking as criminal groups look to cash in on the influx of tourists.

Such concerns have been expressed by the likes of UNICEF, as well as the US and Mexican governments, private companies and rights organizations – and highlighted in multi-agency drives like “It’s a Penalty” and “World Cup Without Trafficking.”

While it’s hard to quantify exactly what impact, if any, the influx of tourists will have on what is an already entrenched problem, survivors warn against underestimating the challenge.

“I can tell you from my own experience that during the time my trafficker sexually exploited me, there was an increase in demand for prostitution (during sporting events),” said Mixi Cruz, who was about 15 when she was forced into prostitution in Mexico City.

The Mexican capital is one of three areas, alongside Guadalajara and Monterrey, that is hosting the 13 matches being played in the country.

While parts of the Mexican government are working with NGOs and the private sector on initiatives to boost reporting on the problem of sex trafficking during the tournament, the sheer scale of the event – expected to draw millions of tourists to the country – makes it hard to police.

“The truth is that Mexico is not currently prepared to host a World Cup,” Cruz said, claiming the government isn’t doing enough to address the problem.

It’s a criticism shared by many activists who say government corruption and impunity have allowed trafficking to become widespread, though officials insist they’re doing their part to crack down through investigations and awareness campaigns.

CNN requested interviews with Mexico’s Secretary of Security and the Secretary for Women as part of its reporting for this article but has yet to hear back.

A rising industry

Human trafficking – particularly for sexual and labor exploitation – is rapidly becoming one of the most profitable criminal businesses in Mexico with gangs, including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel, expanding into this market, according to the 2025 Global Organized Crime Index.

On some estimates it is now the third biggest criminal enterprise in Mexico after drugs and guns.

However, NGOs that work with survivors like Jacinto and Cruz believe the scale of the problem is still being vastly underestimated.

While official figures show a sharp increase in human trafficking victims – 1,154 in 2025 compared to just 537 in 2017, according to Mexico’s National Public Security System – most NGOs believe those numbers represent a tiny fraction of the actual total. One estimate suggests only about 2% of trafficking cases are ever reported to authorities, according to Gabriela González García, a director general for the Citizens’ Council for Security and Justice of Mexico City.

Even in the rare cases where a victim can escape, they are often too afraid to press charges, activists say.

Further complicating the issue is that 13 states in Mexico allow and regulate prostitution for adults, which critics say provides a cover for criminals to traffic victims – regardless of their age – in plain sight in the country’s thriving red-light districts.

Hidden in plain sight

CNN toured four such red-light districts with Indira Villegas, the senior technical adviser at the Latin American division of The Mekong Club, a Hong Kong-based NGO that partners with companies to combat forced labor and modern slavery.

During the tour, dozens of sex workers were openly lined up along busy streets, waiting for clients. While many appeared to be adults, Villegas pointed to several she suspected were children there against their will.

Dressed in revealing clothing, some were visibly nervous; others appeared calm as nearby pimps watched over them like hawks.

It’s a sight so common that local passers-by didn’t seem phased by the many young faces.

Villegas noted that not all sex workers in these districts are trafficked – one of them, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity, said she was there willingly and needed the work to support her kids – but as Jacinto and Cruz pointed out, it’s hard to know who is telling the truth.

Both Jacinto and Cruz said victims are forced by their traffickers to lie whenever asked about their age and whether they are there of their own free will.

“You hear many men who say, ‘Hey, but a woman in prostitution is there because she wants to be,’” said Daniela Tapia, a co-founder of the anti-human trafficking nonprofit Fundación Libera México.

“But what happened at the beginning? If we go back 10 years, she didn’t get there because she wanted to be there.”

Caught in a trap

Jacinto said she was groomed by her trafficker after he approached her at a metro station in Mexico City and struck up a conversion.

She wasn’t even a teenager.

At 12 years old, she was blinded by his claim that he had money, a sports car and a home – a life he promised could also be hers.

He told her that he too had been abused as a child, preying on her vulnerabilities. Looking back, Jacinto said she failed to detect red flags because she had never been taught to look for them. “The issue is that there was no one to teach me – not school, not my parents – about taboo topics,” she said.

She moved in with him within a week and enjoyed the first three months of their “relationship,” during which time he showered her with gifts. But he soon became possessive.

Jacinto found out the truth about his work after becoming suspicious of some of the girls who would accompany his cousins to their home. She eventually got the courage to ask him.

He told her what she herself would have to do from then on – from how to treat the “clients” to how much she would charge.

Days later, she was taken to a brothel to service up to 30 clients per day.

“My first time was with someone who hit me, who spat on me, who abused me,” she recalled. “A phrase he told me was that I was born a whore and I will die whore.”

As horrifying as Jacinto’s story is, it is not an uncommon one for those on the front lines. Tapia said most women she’s worked with entered prostitution through force, deception or the exploitation of vulnerable circumstances such as romantic manipulation.

Not only about sex

Cruz was ensnared in a completely different fashion – by a family member who forced her to work as a domestic servant after her mother died. This is an all-too-familiar tactic, NGOs say.

Around the time she turned 15, Cruz learned her relative was running a sex trade operation, working as both prostitute and pimp. Cruz was pressured to help, with her family member saying she needed money for another relative’s hospital treatment, and that she would get Cruz’s younger sister to do it if Cruz did not agree.

“First she showed me what prostitution was by watching pornography, and then she showed me by watching her do it,” she said. “My brain was in shock.”

Cruz was then made to service clients in hotels. “I was so resigned, I had to hold back my tears and my pain,” she said.

Cruz’s ordeal lasted several months before she escaped with the help of a hotel worker. Jacinto endured four years before a client helped her escape.

But human trafficking is not only about sex. In many cases, victims are exploited for domestic work.

A labor trafficking survivor and activist who calls herself Zunduri, although that’s not her real name, said she was lured at age 17 by a family that promised to care for her. Instead, she was forced to work long hours in the family’s dry-cleaning business, ironing up to 16 dozen shirts a day while being denied food, sleep, and medical care. She says she was eventually kept chained for six months.

“My entire life belonged to them,” recalled Zunduri, who also works with Libera.

After escaping and helping secure convictions against her traffickers, she now works to support other survivors as they rebuild their lives. “It’s a miracle that I’m sitting here today,” she said.

Fake jobs and a safe space

“Exploitation has been advancing,” said Paola Tolsá, a co-founder of Libera México.

“Before it was only sexual exploitation, but now it includes labor exploitation and forced labor … Also, the methods of recruitment (have changed) – before, it was romantic manipulation, the ‘loverboy’ tactic as it’s known internationally. But today it’s often about false job offers.”

Tapia, the other co-founder, said these fake job offers flood social media and have enabled traffickers to target dozens of people at the same time. The first contact, she said, often comes in the form of a post offering jobs such as waitressing or customer service positions.

“It all seems like a dream,” she said.

In many cases, the victim will begin working at what appears to be a legitimate job and the control is built gradually: first trust, then dependence and finally exploitation.

Today, 21 survivors, some with their children, live in a shelter managed by Libera – most of them young girls, including at least one as young as 6.

Teaching them how to trust again is one of the shelter’s aims.

“We become their family, a safe place where they can recover,” Tapia said.

The kids are encouraged to eat together in a communal dining room. They are also taught how to read and write, and to follow daily routines.

The floors at the shelter are full of toys, small backpacks, and shoes of every color and size – most neatly arranged, some scattered after playtime. The girls run through the garden, chase one another and stop to laugh for no apparent reason.

“For us, it’s not just about receiving a girl or boy here, but about accompanying them, building a life project, and hand in hand with them in this painful process, we are going to rebuild the person,” Tolsá said.

The risk from mass tourism

Indira Navarro, who leads a civilian group in Jalisco that searches for missing people, said disappearances of young girls often spike during large sporting events. Often, those girls have been recruited by criminal groups and forced into prostitution to serve tourists, she said.

The risk posed to trafficking victims, according to human rights groups, becomes multi-faceted during events like the World Cup.

Traffickers can exploit vulnerable people who “feel like major events like the World Cup can help them to find employment and new job opportunities,” said Villegas of The Mekong Club.

Then there is the effect that increased alcohol consumption and the “euphoria of sport” can have, said José Antonio Ruiz Hernández, National Child Protection Officer at UNICEF Mexico.

But not everyone’s convinced of the link between mass events and increases in trafficking. Some skeptics say there is too little data; rights groups counter that governments do too little to track a problem that makes them look bad.

Either way, Villegas said that for this World Cup, NGOs, the government and the private sector are working together to do “everything they can to prevent this.”

The Citizens’ Council for Security and Justice of Mexico City, which operates a national hotline for victims to report cases, is partnering with the United Nations and Uber, among others, to promote the reporting of trafficking.

Since 2013, the organization has helped more than 25,000 people who’ve called in to file a report, director general Gabriela González García said.

UNICEF, meanwhile, is helping hotel chains to train staff and educate guests about the risks. Some hotels have joined an initiative called “Zero Tolerance-Blue Card,” which uses soccer terminology to encourage the public to report possible cases.

“The point is that we all feel like referees against this crime,” said Givette Pérez Orea, director of the Mexican National Association of Hotel Chains.

Still, as Jacinto pointed out, the risks for vulnerable young people will continue long after the World Cup is over.

“I think one of the things that might work is that today we talk not only about the World Cup, but also about what happens beyond the World Cup,” she said. (CNN)

Update news