Utah based Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) has attracted a great deal of attention since it was first endorsed by Glenn Beck, an American conservative political pundit, in 2013. This new addition to the already crowded field of anti-trafficking organisations “us[es] cutting-edge computer technology and human intelligence [to] go into the darkest corners of the world to help local law enforcement liberate enslaved children and dismantle the criminal networks.” It is this type of language that identifies OUR as yet another disturbing example of a ‘raid-and-rescue’ organisation. As Kamala Kempadoo has demonstrated, these interventions represent the latest version of the ‘white man’s burden’, with a ‘civilised’ West offering salvation and protection to ‘the rest’. While such sentiments are common, OUR takes things one step further by sending, essentially, gun-toting vigilantes to foreign countries in the pursuit of ‘hope and freedom’ for enslaved children.
A cursory assessment of OUR’s website shows that the organisation is able to capture the public’s attention by exploiting the stereotype of the ‘saviour’ and the ‘saved’. The site’s main page features Tim Ballard, an ex-CIA agent and CEO of OUR, paternalistically stroking the head of a black child. Next to the image is a link to The Ride to Freedom, a five-minute vignette discussing the process of posing as child traffickers to free child slaves and arrest the perpetrators. The “Promise” page likewise presents a photograph of a young girl who may or may not have once been a slave—though her complexion and clothing suggests she is from a ‘third world country’, and hence, vulnerable to enslavement.
OUR CEO Tim Ballard holding a 'liberated slave' in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Screenshot from ourrescue.org.
