In a world that too often turns away from its most vulnerable, Natasha Nascimento and her team at Redefining Refuge, the nonprofit she founded in 2010, continue to rise with courage, compassion, and unwavering resolve.
For the second year in a row, Nascimento and Redefining Refuge joined forces with the U.S. Marshals and a network of committed agencies in Operation Dragon Eye, a sweeping effort across the Tampa Bay area to recover exploited children from the horrors of trafficking and offer them safety, healing, hope, and refuge.
Florida continues to rank among the highest states in reported human trafficking cases, according to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, a sobering reminder of the critical need for intervention and advocacy.
Bill Berger, U.S. Marshal for the Middle District of Florida, described the two-week covert sting in late May and early June as “the largest in the history of the United States Marshal Service, if not the history of the United States.”
Sixty children ages 9 to 17 were recovered. According to the office of Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, eight individuals were arrested on charges ranging from human trafficking and child endangerment to drug possession and trafficking.
Unlike last year’s operation, several of the recovered children this time were pregnant. Because of the coordinated effort behind Operation Dragon Eye and the haven Redefining Refuge provides, these young mothers now have the opportunity to bring their babies into the world free from the trauma and cycle of exploitation.
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Redefining RefugeThe Redefining Refuge team during Operation Dragon Eye“This is our second year doing this with the U.S. Marshals,” Nascimento shares. “Redefining Refuge acted in the same capacity as this year. We hosted the centralized command post. All of the different agencies, the law enforcement, advocates, non-governmental agencies, are a giant collaboration, essentially, like an interagency collaboration, but there's a centralized command post for it.”
That command post housed analysts from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Tampa Police Department, Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, St. Petersburg Police Department, Pasco County Sheriff's Office, and the Attorney General’s Office, along with analysts from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, whom Redefining Refuge secured grant funding to bring down for the operation. The logistical and emotional magnitude of the operation is staggering.
“A lot of what goes on in the command post is we're supporting all the field agents,” Nascimento says. “When they're out there in the field, we're giving them data or giving them information that can assist them in their recovery.”
Healing and support
BayCare, which provided medical and mental health care to youth recovered during the operation, also offered valuable cooperation to create a healing environment. Along with More Too Life and Bridging Freedom, fellow nonprofits with a mission to fight child trafficking, team members from Redefining Refuge and BayCare transformed a hospital wing into a welcoming, trauma-informed space for the recovered children.
“One of my biggest things during the recovery process is, we didn't want to bring kids to a hospital where there were white sheets, because they have white sheets in hotels and motels,” Nascimento says. “BayCare allowed us to come in and bring all of these colorful sheets, little stuffed animals, clean clothes, snacks, and all that sort of thing, so really, BayCare allowed us to create a really soft landing in what could otherwise be construed as a very clinical environment.”
The work is not only logistically challenging; it is emotionally wrenching.
“It's one of the most difficult things that you'll ever do as a human being, especially if you're a human being that cares deeply about what you're doing, so it's hard, very, very difficult work,” Nascimento shares.
This year’s operation recovered more than double the children than last year. It also brought times of heartbreak.
“The very first day, we recovered a young girl who had been missing for around nine months,” Nascimento says. “You're a 15-year-old. You're a mom. And we called her dad. She doesn't have a mom. She passed away. And so we called her dad to let him know this really great news: we found his daughter...And instead of the dad saying, 'Oh, my gosh, how is she? Where is she? Can I come see her?'... The dad immediately says, 'Oh, well, I mean, what do I need to sign because I can't take care of her?'
“And then you are in the position where now you've got to go tell this girl that's just
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Redefining RefugeTampa Bay nonprofit Redefining Refuge provides comprehensive care, support services, and advocacy for children and youth recovered from exploitation and trafficking.
been recovered under awful circumstances, who's lying in a hospital bed surrounded by a bunch of strangers, you have to be the one who says, 'Hey, your dad doesn't want you.' I can't imagine hearing that, as a grown adult, never mind as a 15-year-old… And then you wonder why these children run away or why these children stay missing... For children who are sort of stuck in that in-between, it's awful. Imagine that for a child. They found you, and you're just like in this horrible in-between of where-do-you-go because you belong to no one. Your parents don't want you. You don't have any other family. And you don't belong to the state. And then people wonder how kids end up with traffickers who're providing those tangible needs of ‘Well, I want you. You have a stable living situation. I'm going to love you,’ even though it's conditional and it comes with horrible, traumatic strings attached.”
Still, Nascimento and her team persist, fueled by love, humility, and the hope that change is possible – at every level.
“If you look at how child welfare was designed, historically, it was designed to give families a temporary hand up...Now child welfare has become this institution where families are just giving their children to,” she says. “In two weeks, we had three different families say, ‘Well, we just don't want our kids anymore, so you take them.’ And that's just happening across the board, so I think we need to provide more family support, obviously, because I think a lot of this is generational.”
Refuge redefined once more
Nascimento reflects on the journey from Redefining Refuge’s earliest days.
“When I started doing the work, my goal was not even to have a residential program at the time,” she says. “My goal was just to redefine the narrative that was surrounding this group of children. I think back then, there was no legislation in place that protected these children. These children were criminalized for being sexually assaulted, essentially. It's interesting that Redefining Refuge has the name that it has because I think it's continued to redefine what refuge is at so many different junctures. Refuge at one point was legislation, and changing the narrative around these kids. And then refuge at another time was an actual physical location where you could house those kids. And now refuge is looking like, intervening in these critical moments for children, for their own children.”
For Nascimento, the most humbling moments come when children who have been recovered return to help others.
“We actually have three different children that are wanting to do anything,” she says.“Can we intern with you? Can we work with you? Which is so beautiful. And I guess we're trying to figure out the dynamics with that. And I'll tell you why I'm so careful. I never, ever, ever want children to feel indebted to Redefining Refuge in any way, or that we did something for them expecting anything in return, because that would mean that we're just like the people that hurt them. We're trying to therapeutically navigate that with the therapist on board. What is the motivation for them wanting to do this? Is it that they just want to help other kids, or is it that they feel indebted to our agency? And if there's any overarching theme of
‘I just feel like I want to do something for Redefining Refuge,’ then I wouldn't do it because that's not the right thing. It's a very new position for us to be in, but it's come up a lot in the last six months. There's nothing more powerful than lived-experience experts being on your team and being able to advocate for their peers.”
Nascimento shares insights on how the community can be part of the solution to the scourge of trafficking.
“Obviously getting training and being aware of what to report is always helpful,” she says. “But the most helpful thing that anyone can do is become a guardian ad litem. That's just such an important component of these kids' lives... Become a foster parent, somebody who can even help with respite care for children. Those are some big asks, but those are just truly transformational things that you can do for children… I always say that the best intervention, or the best transformation, is the relationship. It's not the program. It's who you connect with at those programs. And so, you know, one relationship could be the difference between a child ending up with a trafficker and a child not.”
Nascimento emphasizes the importance of listening deeply and providing a platform for the children’s voices.
“I think the biggest thing that I've learned in the last decade is, you know, there's this narrative that says, ‘Oh, you're giving a voice to the voiceless.’ And I just don't think that's true," she says. "I think these kids have voices. It’s just that no one was listening to them.”
What Nascimento and her team do is more than recovery. It’s restoration. It’s rewriting futures. And it’s a powerful affirmation of what she has long understood: these children have always had voices, Redefining Refuge simply chose to listen.
For more information, go to Redefining Refuge