Matt and Mercedes Schlapp's international expansion of the Conservative Political Action Coalition has brought them face to face with a foe even worse than rapidly expanding socialism and liberalism — child trafficking.
“My daughters have gone with me to some of the places, and for you, when you see your child next to one of the victims, and there are similar ages, it sure does make a difference,” said Schlapp, the chairman of CPAC and father of five girls.
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“First of all, it makes you count your blessings,” he said in an interview. Second, he said, it is a wake-up call for action. “My kids have had a crash course on what's really going on with the tumult in the world, in the struggle our nation is in,” he added.
Now, after hosting several CPAC gatherings overseas in nations such as Brazil and Mexico, where cartels operate freely in kidnapping children and trafficking them into the United States and elsewhere, the Schlapps are planning to tackle the problem.
With the opening of CPAC’s Center for Combating Human Trafficking this week as part of its Nolan Center for Justice, Schlapp is hoping to draw attention to the problem and develop policies to stop it at the border.
“What Mercy and I have realized, and what our team has realized, is we can be a real difference-maker here. So we're going to make that difference,” Schlapp said.
To help draw attention to their effort, CPAC is hosting a premiere Tuesday night of Angel Studios’s new feature about child savior Tim Ballard, a former Homeland Security official who now heads Operation Underground Railroad, a nonprofit group responsible for saving 6,000 trafficked children.
The movie, The Sound Of Freedom, tells Ballard’s story of traveling the world to save children. It stars Jim Caviezel as Ballard and Mira Sorvino as his wife. It opens on July 4.
The premiere is at Washington's Museum of the Bible.
Schlapp said the effort is very important to his wife, a first-generation Cuban American and former Trump White House communications adviser. He said that she has added visiting orphanages and shelters as part of a “service component” to international conventions.
“I can assure you that as we get up every morning and have our morning coffee, one of the first things she will bring up is, 'Are we making progress to help more kids?' So I'm expecting that to be at the top of the agenda every morning,” he said.
Schlapp said the new center will push its agenda in several ways. First, he hopes to use CPAC’s annual congressional report card to highlight the problem and those who help in the war on child trafficking.
The center is expected to begin work on border plans to stop illegal trafficking while also helping children escape the illegal drug and child-moving cartels.
He also plans to use CPAC’s “brand” to draw attention to the problem when CPAC hosts events overseas. “The CPAC brand carries weight, and people want to meet with us, and people want to hear from us. And part of our message, when we go overseas, is going to be, 'What are you doing to combat human trafficking,'” he said.
Schlapp added, “We're going to use our contacts overseas in these different countries, and we're going to do everything we can to shine a spotlight on the bad guys and to help these children with the tools at our disposal.”
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He hopes to work with lawmakers who have long battled trafficking, such as Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), probably the biggest and most successful player in the effort in Congress today.
“Chris Smith stands up for the dignity of human beings in categories that don't seem to be respected anymore. He deserves great credit for being in it for a very long time. I admire him greatly. And I would love to work with him on doing everything CPAC can to help in the cause,” Schlapp said.
“We have a lot of soft power,” he said of CPAC.