BEAUMONT, Texas — Organizations from both Southeast Texas and Louisiana are joining forces to put an end to human trafficking.
The "Brainstorming at the Border" summit between Harvest House, Junior League of Beaumont, Junior League of Lake Charles and law enforcement officials comes a day after eight Southeast Texas massage parlors were raided.
This is all an effort to highlight the need for Texas and Louisiana to work together and keep traffickers off Interstate 10.
Advocates and law enforcement say Interstate 10 is the main route for traffickers, using the Texas-Louisiana border to travel from city to city.
Tania Castelan works with the Junior League of Beaumont's abolish committee. She believes more summits will be crucial to preventing human trafficking.
"Our mission is to educate the community and make them aware about what sex trafficking is and what we can do to prevent it," she said. "That's a lot of us where we can go out and educate the community."
Beaumont Police Detective Chris Raymer spoke at the summit and explained how he responds when someone suspects human trafficking.
"We do an investigation on scene as far as asking questions that could lead us to knowing whether or not someone may or may not be victimized in human trafficking," he said.
That's when prosecutors like Tatiana Zelezniak step in.
She's prosecuted and convicted eight human traffickers within the past few years
"We can't know about the cases unless the community knows that there's trafficking and knows how big of an issue it is," Zelezniak said.
And all speakers agree on one thing; If you see something, say something.