Miss. secretary of state stops by USM for human trafficking summit

HATTIESBURG, Miss. (WDAM) - Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson stopped by The University of Southern Mississippi’s Hattiesburg campus Tuesday afternoon for a conference on human trafficking.

Watson, along with business owners and organizational leaders, combined for the Mississippi Businesses Against Trafficking summit.

The MBAT summit is put on by the USM School of Social Work.

“When I first started getting engaged in this subject, this awful happening here in Mississippi, the very first one that I heard about was in Brookhaven,” said Watson. “You think it’s just outside of Mississippi? No, no, no, It’s right here at home, in our backyards.”

According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, more than 500 signals were received from Mississippi alone in 2021.

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