Timothy Ballard

After growing up in California, Ballard attended Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah.[11] As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he went on a church mission to Chile and then graduated cum laude from BYU with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish and Political Science. Then, he graduated summa cum laude from the Monterey Institute of International Studies with a Master of Arts degree in International Politics.[12]

Ballard worked as a Special Agent for the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, for over ten years.[13] During his time working for the American government, he worked on the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and worked as an undercover agent for the U.S. Child Sex Tourism Jump Team.[13] Most of his career was spent working out of the US-Mexico port of entry in Calexico, California with the focus on child exploitation and trafficking cases. These cases regularly took Ballard, who speaks fluent Spanish,[14] into Latin America.[15]

Ballard left the government in 2013 and founded the non-profit organization Operation Underground Railroad, or O.U.R.[13][16] He has briefed politicians on the issue of child sex trafficking, including President Donald Trump in January 2019.[17][18][19][20][21]

On May 14, 2015, Ballard was asked to testify before the United States Congress. The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Global Human Rights held a hearing on the partnerships between U.S. government and non-governmental organizations that rescue trafficking victims.[4] On March 6, 2019, Ballard was called to testify before the US Senate Judiciary Committee concerning US-Mexico border security and its relation to child sex trafficking.[22][23]

In 2019 Ballard was appointed to the White House Public-Private Partnership Advisory Council to End Human Trafficking.[24]

In 2016, The Abolitionists, a documentary from Schindler's List producer Gerald Molen, featured the first operations undertaken by Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad.[25] Another documentary from director Nick Nanton, Operation Toussaint, was produced in 2018 which featured an operation in Haiti that had the support of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and former congresswoman Mia Love.[18] A feature film about Ballard's life, Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel, Mira Sorvino, and Eduardo Verástegui was announced in 2018.[26][27] The 2018 documentary, Operation Toussaint, and the 2020 documentary, Triple Take, were also based on Ballard's work against sex trafficking.[28][29]

ESPN featured Ballard and Pittsburgh Steelers' head coach Mike Tomlin in a piece which highlighted the restavek issue near the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.[30] Tomlin would also write the foreword to Ballard's book Slave Stealers: True Accounts of Slave Rescues – Then and Now.[31][32][33]

A 2020, Vice News investigation found that the organization employed "a pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading". For instance, O.U.R. claimed that it rescued a woman named "Liliana", however, Ballard testified in court that she escaped herself and his organization is caring for her.[34] The organization's spending also lacks transparency.[5] A 2021 follow-up article further criticized O.U.R.'s practices, which included using inexperienced donors and celebrities as part of its "jump team", a lack of meaningful surveillance or identification of targets, failing to validate whether the people they intended to rescue were in fact actual trafficking victims, and conflating consensual sex work with sex trafficking.

Ballard and supporters of O.U.R. have been criticized for promoting the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory.[35][36][37] Ballard has denied any association with QAnon.[38]

On August 27, 2020, Lynn Packer with American Crime Journal presented the findings of his investigation into Ballard and O.U.R. He reported criminal complaints had been forwarded to the Davis County District Attorney at their office in Farmington, Utah.[39] Packer was later interviewed by American psychologist John Dehlin. Dehlin asked why such a major "development for the state of Utah and the LDS Church" was not released or "being pursued" by mainstream Utah press. Packer asserted that Utah media and the LDS Church were complicit in legitimizing Operation Underground Railroad with little to no oversight and fact-checking. Packer revealed that he had spent the last five years investigating Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad and anyone who spends more than five minutes looking into the organization could find fraud and corruption.[40]

In October 2020, the Attorney's Office of Davis County, Utah stated that O.U.R. and Tim Ballard were under criminal investigation regarding complaints that O.U.R. had conducted illegal fundraising efforts.[41][42][43] Investigative journalists Anna Merlan and Tim Marchmann for Vice News confirmed reports by investigative journalist Lynn Packer and Damion Moore of American Crime Journal of a clandestine meeting held in August, 2019, where Tim Ballard summoned officers and managers of his non-profit and for-profit businesses, including several from Operation Underground Railroad.[9] At the meeting he presented in detail a criminal conspiracy to launder donor money from non-profits into his for-profit businesses.[41][44]