Across the country, especially here in Florida, police “anti-trafficking” operations and local code enforcement raids are being celebrated as “rescues.” But for the people most often targeted, especially BIPOC and migrant sex workers, these raids lead to arrest, criminal charges, family separation, and, for many, deportation. What gets framed as protection is, in practice, punishment.
Criminalization doesn’t make anyone safer. It pushes sex work further underground, increases vulnerability to violence, and fuels policing strategies that specifically target the Asian massage workers, undocumented women, trans women of color, unhoused people, and low-income workers surviving the state’s economic crisis. Time and again, communities report the same pattern: large multi-agency raids, public press conferences, and then the quiet harm, the workers detained, workers deported, workers losing housing, workers disappearing into ICE custody.
This isn’t accidental. It’s the predictable outcome of laws and enforcement strategies built on surveillance, racial profiling, and moral panic. And it’s why sex-worker-led, migrant-led organizations across the world continue to call for full decriminalization and an end to raids disguised as “safety interventions.”
Below, you’ll see the image (we blurred for privacy) from “Operation Skin So Soft”, a raid carried out by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office targeting massage parlors in 2024. We’re including it as an example of how the entire branding of these raids, the names, fonts, and marketing, exposes how unserious, harmful, and dehumanizing these operations actually are. Law enforcement didn’t choose the name to reflect any concern for safety. They chose it to fetishize and mock Asian massage parlor workers. It’s offensive, objectifying, and reveals exactly how police treat migrant sex workers: as sexualized, dehumanized criminals, props, and headlines.
White Western Feminists Have Work To Do
One of the clearest messages from migrant sex-worker organizers is that rescue narratives cause harm. The book Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers For Justice lays this out powerfully: when white Western feminists decide what liberation “should” look like and impose carceral, policing-based solutions, the result is more violence, not less.
Too often, sex workers are talked about but are silenced and ignored, especially by those who consider themselves “rescuers”. Their labor is debated, their voices and autonomy are dismissed, and their existence becomes a battleground for moral ideology. But solidarity requires humility: stepping back, taking direction from the communities most affected, and refusing to use feminism to justify policing.
This is especially clear when considering multi-agency operations like Skin So Soft, which target the migrant massage‑parlor sector under the guise of “protecting victims.” These raids openly shame and harm migrant sex workers, massage parlor workers, and people who have been trafficked, while positioning carceral institutions, like ICE, as the “hero”. Sex Workers, survivors, and people who’ve experienced trafficking know best what safety, support, and dignity look like in their lives, not the police, ICE, or legislators.
Across the world, groups led by survivors and sex‑worker organizers are building anti‑carceral, non‑judgmental spaces where people can seek help, healing, and support, when and if they want, without fear of stigma, criminalization, alternative agendas, or deportation.
The Cupcake Girls, for example, centers on confidentiality, trauma‑informed outreach, and holistic support: connecting people to medical and mental‑health care, housing and financial aid, legal and career resources, peer support, and safe community relationships.
They emphasize “Support Without Agenda,” building trust through empathy and respect instead of coercion or surveillance.
If we care about protecting migrants, trafficked people, and sex workers alike, then we must shift resources toward funding and supporting survivor-led organizations that prioritize autonomy, healing, and long-term care over policing and criminalization.
Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice by Chanelle Gallant & Elene Lam unpacks how the anti-trafficking industry and “rescue” narratives reproduce state violence, and it centers the emancipatory politics of migrant sex workers themselves. Buy the book here!
