the remaining 19 were related to child sex predators<\/a>.<\/p>\n[RELATED: \u2018Santa Claus\u2019 arrested in Central Florida child sex sting, sheriff says]<\/p>\n
Per the release, the 127 suspects who travelled to commit prostitution were screened by investigators to figure out whether they were being trafficked by others.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring this investigation, seven possible human trafficking victims were identified,\u201d the release reads.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, 108 suspects were arrested for soliciting a prostitute, and two of those suspects were caught bringing their children to the undercover location, yielding additional charges of child neglect, detectives revealed.<\/p>\n
And of the 247 human-trafficking arrests, 34 are in the country illegally, and 22 are collecting public assistance, amounting to over $15,000 per month collectively, the sheriff\u2019s office stated.<\/p>\n
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd is set to hold a news conference on Friday morning to discuss the case further. That briefing is scheduled for 10 a.m.<\/p>\n
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Copyright 2026 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"POLK COUNTY, Fla. \u2013 Over 260 people were taken into custody after a massive operation kicked off in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7071,265,28,30,29,8236,1911,21956],"class_list":["post-253681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-children","tag-crime","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-illegal-immigration","tag-polk-county","tag-winter-haven"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}