HERE'S SOMETHING FROM FACT-CHECK
FACT CHECK: ARE 80% OF MIGRANT WOMEN RAPED ON THEIR JOURNEY TO THE US?
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed Friday that up to 80 percent of migrant women traveling through Mexico are raped.
Verdict: True
Estimates vary, but as many as eight in 10 migrant women may be raped by transnational gang members, other migrants or corrupt officials on their journey to the U.S.
Fact Check:
At a tax reform roundtable Thursday, President Donald Trump veered off script to talk at length about illegal immigration. He brought up how a “caravan” of roughly 1,000 Central American migrants, mostly from Honduras, were making their way through Mexico to seek asylum in the U.S.
“And yesterday, it came out where, this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before,” claimed Trump. “They don’t want to mention that.”
Migrants will pay people smugglers – or coyotes – to navigate them through Mexico to reach the U.S. Along the way, migrants may be kidnapped by human traffickers, or held as ransom. Women, especially those who travel alone, are susceptible to sexual abuse or rape, and some are forced into prostitution.
“Sexual violence, or the threat of sexual violence, is often used as a means of terrorizing women and their relatives,” says a 2010 report by Amnesty International. “Many criminal gangs appear to use sexual violence as part of the ‘price’ demanded of migrants.”
The threat of rape is so severe that some women even take contraceptives before embarking on the trip to avoid pregnancy.
It’s possible the incidence of rape is higher than reported, says Amnesty International, as women are often reluctant to discuss sexual assault.