ICE Helps Round Up Sex Workers in Florida

A recent “human trafficking enforcement operation” in Polk County, Florida, led to 244 arrests—albeit none for human trafficking. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Polk County is far from alone in rounding up sex workers and their customers under the auspices of stopping human trafficking. And as is so frequently the case, the federal government had a hand in this operation, which authorities dubbed Fool Around and Find Out.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigations Division were involved in Operation Fool Around and Find Out, along with more than a dozen Florida sheriff’s offices and police departments.

In addition to targeting adults for trying to consensually engage other adults in private sexual activity, immigration enforcement seems to have been a goal. A press release from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO) notes that 36 of those arrested “are here illegally.”

The sheriff’s office also released photos of all of those arrested, with color-coded boxes around some arrestees to denote that they’re undocumented immigrants or receiving welfare benefits.

NFL Player Arrested, but No Human Traffickers

Among those arrested was former NFL player Adarius Taylor, a fact that has catapulted this story into national news. And that’s meant a whole lot of outlets playing right into the police’s preferred narrative.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd has been pulling this trick year after year—arresting a bunch of sex workers and people looking to pay sex workers and then patting his team on the back for all of the “human trafficking” they allegedly stopped. A press release about Operation Fool Around and Find Out touts the arrest of “244 suspects during [a] nine-day human trafficking enforcement operation.”

In headlines—and, let’s be honest, that’s all many people will see—it sure sounds like the PCSO did some heroic work. But read beyond the headlines, and you’ll note that no one was arrested on suspicion of human trafficking. Nor was anyone arrested on suspicion of sexual abuse of a minor, sexual assault, kidnapping, or any other charge that might indicate something other than consensual adult activity going on.

According to the sheriff’s office, the suspects were “involved in illegal acts related to soliciting prostitutes, offering to commit prostitution, or aiding/abetting or transporting prostitutes.”

This isn’t just a semantic difference; it’s the deliberate creation of a false narrative.

When people hear “human trafficking,” they imagine abductions, captivity, violence. Maybe the involvement of children. Maybe people being brought across borders. Not just one adult offering to pay another adult for sex or accepting payment for sex.

And, in fact, this is a distinction under Florida law, too. Human trafficking—a first-degree felony—is a distinct crime from the offenses of offering to commit prostitution, soliciting prostitution, transporting someone for prostitution, or otherwise aiding and abetting prostitution, all of which are misdemeanors upon a first offense. (Second or third offenses on the same charges can be felonies.) Human trafficking of an adult must involve some degree of coercion, whereas the other offenses do not.

93 Sex Workers, 141 Sex Buyers Arrested

In Operation Fool Around and Find Out, the vast majority of arrests were for prostitution or solicitation, with 93 people arrested for allegedly offering sex for a fee and 141 people arrested for allegedly agreeing to pay an undercover cop for sex. In addition, 10 people were arrested for driving someone suspected of the other crimes or facilitating them in some way.

The vast majority of the charges stemming from these arrests—284—were misdemeanors. In addition, 102 felonies were charged.

The inclusion of ICE and Homeland Security in this operation suggests that immigration enforcement was one goal. This is often a sneaky motive behind prostitution stings disguised as human trafficking operations.

But we shouldn’t discount good, old-fashioned puritanism and sex shaming as another motive for Polk County authorities. “Several suspects either left their wives or girlfriends at home, or the women thought their partners were at work, visiting a friend, or going to the gym,” states the press release from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office.

And just for fun, it threw in a little class shaming, too, noting that “22 said they were receiving government assistance.”

Trying To Confuse the Issue

Toward the bottom of the press release, a quote from Sheriff Judd notes that “in addition to these 244 arrests, we also arrested 11 child predators who solicited who they thought were children online.” Judd seemingly wants to give the impression that Operation Fool Around and Find Out did more than just arrest people for wanting to engage in consensual adult activity.

But those 11 arrests were part of a separate operation, with its own name: Operation Child Protector VI. They appear to have nothing to do with the other 244 arrests.

Operation Child Protector VI was a classic To Catch a Predator sting, and these can come with their own due process problems. I’m certainly not here to defend adults arranging to meet a 14- or 15-year-old for sex, but it’s unclear if these types of stings actually stop predators or just create criminals out of people who would never actually make such a move without undercover cops luring them in. At the very least, it seems like police time and resources might be better spent stopping harms against actual children who are being abused.

What is clear, however, is that catching child predators in stings like those set up by Polk County authorities does not actually require arresting nearly 100 unrelated sex workers and publishing their photos online. It does not require arresting a bunch of men who simply want to be with another adult, and it does not require making a little chart to tell the public which ones receive public assistance and which ones are here illegally.

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Follow-Ups: OneTaste Trial, TAKE IT DOWN Act

Orgasmic meditation on trial: I continue to follow the trial of Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz, former leaders at the company OneTaste and proponents of orgasmic meditation. I covered the early days of the trial for this newsletter last week (and wrote at length about the prosecution more generally back in February). For more recent updates, check out this and this thread on X (or click here and here if you prefer Bluesky).

Overall, court proceedings have continued to revolve around some pretty absurd notions about agency and consent, with prosecutors suggesting that Daedone and Cherwitz are guilty of conspiracy to commit forced labor because some employees felt like it was difficult to leave OneTaste since they had tied their whole identities, social lives, and professional goals up in the company.

Throughout the proceedings, there’s also been a persistent theme of people rewriting history. Government witnesses will say that their experiences with OneTaste were bad, but contemporaneous social media posts will say they were extremely happy and excited about their lives and work. Government witnesses will say that they feel uncomfortable about sexual activities that were part of the community or part of their jobs, then admit that they never expressed this discomfort to Cherwitz or Daedone or anyone else—and often indicated then, in various ways, that they were fine with or even enthusiastic about it.

Proceedings have also been full of a lot of psychobabble explanations about why college-educated women in their 20s and 30s were somehow unable to make their own financial, professional, social, and sexual choices. The government wants to pretend this case is about helping women, but watching these court proceedings, one would get the impression that women are too fickle and fragile to make any decisions for themselves.

See also, in The American Conservative: “Christians Should Oppose Feds’ Targeting Sex Company.”

“Revenge porn” bill becomes law: President Donald Trump has signed the TAKE IT DOWN Act into law, instituting a new online censorship scheme under the auspices of thwarting revenge porn and AI-generated “nonconsensual intimate visual depictions.”

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More Sex & Tech News

• Bills to ban kids from social media are advancing in Texas and in Nebraska. The Texas bill is notable because, unlike age-verification bills that have been passed in other states, it prohibits anyone under age 18 from having an account (usually, the age limit is a bit lower) and contains no exception for cases where a teen has obtained parental consent.

• A Virginia politician has come out as “ethically non-monogamous.” Yvonne Rorrer, a candidate for Virginia’s House of Delegates, apparently wanted to get ahead of the story, since “in politics, people love to dig up the unexpected and spin it into a spectacle,” as she put it on social media. “I’m sharing this because I believe in radical honesty, and I refuse to live in the shadows waiting for information to be leaked. If someone’s going to talk about my life, it’s going to be me.”

• The Kids Online Safety Act is back. “Senators have once again put forward the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), reviving a bill that, if enacted, would radically reshape how Americans experience the internet,” notes the nonprofit group Reclaim the Net:

Promoted as a measure to protect children, this latest version now carries the backing of Apple, a tech giant that has publicly endorsed the legislation as a meaningful step toward improving online safety.

But behind the bipartisan sales pitch and industry support lies a framework that risks expanding government control over online content and eroding user privacy through mandated age verification and surveillance infrastructure.

• A Nevada bill (Assembly Bill 209) that “would grant sex workers immunity from criminal liability from prostitution-related offenses if they call 911 seeking medical assistance,” as the Nevada Current put it, is opposed by local police groups but still advancing in the legislature. “The bill was originally broader and included protections for sex workers who called the police if they were victims or witnesses of crime, including assault or human trafficking. In an attempt to appease law enforcement, Orentlicher narrowed the bill specifically to protect sex workers seeking medical assistance,” the Current points out. It passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 15, having previously passed out of the state Assembly. It has until the end of this Friday to pass the full Senate or it will be dead.

• A Texas bill that would have held bookstores liable for the “distribution, transmission, or display of harmful material to a minor” is likely dead. “The bill, filed by Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, did not get a second reading on the House floor last week, making it effectively dead for this legislative session,” reports KERA News. “However, the bill could technically still be revived as an amendment tacked on to another bill in the legislature.”

• The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)—formerly Morality in Media—is suing several porn platforms on behalf of a Kansas grandmother who says her teenage grandson was able to access them, in violation of Kansas age-verification law.

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