“Our partners say that they are in contact with the scam centers for some survivors, even if they can somehow succeed in coming out, they have no place to place it. Then the survivors have no money for a flight home, which is why they are regained in the centers because they have no right alternative options, ‘says Macher. “Some survivors have injuries such as broken legs to jump out of the window to escape, and now the organizations have no money to put them in hospitals, and without medical care the survivors can be paralyzed.”

Several sources told Wired that organizations that relied on funding had to stop or reduce the job and dismiss staff members. Macher, who ran working groups with members of her network last week, says some survivors of scam connections get help to return home; However, shelters that temporarily house and provide care have been affected. “Without a safe and reliable shelter to house them after their escape, some survivors choose to return to their exploitative work in the scam centers, despite knowing the risks,” says Macher.

“There are shelters in neighboring countries such as Cambodia and Myanmar for people who have just been saved, and there are helplines, and so it has lost all their financing overnight,” says Michael Brosowski, the founder of Blue Dragon, an impact affected Charity that has saved more than 1700 trafficking victims, including that people are prevented from trading in brothels linked to online scam.

Brosowski says Blue Dragon has worked to reduce the worst damage caused by the freezers. “We struggled to work out what we can cut, how can we scale back without losing the most direct work,” says Brosowski. For example, training programs for social workers who help human trafficking survivors may need to be cut, Brosowski says.

Even if a degree of financing returns – the freezing point of the State Department will be in place 90 days – organizations that support the victims are never the same as staff members are forced to find other work or move away from the areas true They worked locally did not survive. This loss of expertise will be extremely detrimental to the assistance efforts, sources say.

“They have damaged relationships with local partners or authorities with which they worked regularly to address these issues,” says two researchers at a global thinking tank that has done their work on policy recommendations on tackling scams to the US government, disrupting have.

Apart from humanitarian efforts, the financing breaks are likely to allow even temporary criminal organizations to thrive further. Some of the financing cuts have an impact on programs designed to help identify potential criminals and help local law enforcement efforts, according to one government official on an international NGO with multiple US grants.

“The identification of criminal networks, identifying the bad actors, sends the information to the National Security Council. Everything that goes on is stopped, ”adds the two global thinking researchers.

In the end, it all means that victims of human trafficking will be trapped in unthinkable circumstances, while more people in the US and around the world are at risk of becoming victims in the ongoing fraud that runs off the connections.

“These scam connections, they mind people who are in the US,” says Brosowski of Blue Dragon. “The US government may save hundreds of millions of dollars to cut these types of programs, but the scammers will take billions.”