No, a child trafficking camp wasn’t found in Arizona

An old conspiracy theory is getting rehashed on social media as claims about an abandoned campsite in Arizona are shared without context. 

"‘Child trafficking camp’ discovered in Arizona, is owned by CEMEX (cementera Mexicana) donors to Clinton Foundation," reads a screenshot of a tweet shared in an Instagram post. "Dozens of U.S. citizens have joined forces with veterans to uncover what they believe is a child trafficking camp hidden in the woods in Arizona." 

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The Nov. 30 tweet included a video that doesn’t appear in the Instagram post: a news broadcast from KVOA-TV, an NBC News affiliate in Tucson, Arizona. The news segment covers how Veterans on Patrol, a homeless veterans advocacy group, discovered an abandoned campsite and concluded that it was a child trafficking camp. 

What’s not clear from the clip in the tweet: the broadcast aired June 2018, after the group found the campsite on the grounds of the Cemex Concrete Co. in Tucson in May 2018. 

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More important context: a few days later, the station reported that Tucson police found no evidence connecting the abandoned camp with child sex trafficking. False claims still spread online.

"The camp has become part of a theorized plot linking the homeless encampment to some of the most common targets of far-right conspiracies: the Clintons, the Rothschilds and George Soros, among others," NBC News reported in 2018.

Tucson police told the outlet that it had sent officers, detectives and a command staff to investigate, but found "no indication" that the camp was being used for anything criminal. After Veterans on Patrol claimed bodies could be buried there, the police sent a cadaver dog. No bodies were found. 

ABC affiliate KGUN-TV in Tucson also reported in 2018 that special agents within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s trafficking division investigated and "found nothing that would validate the claims of possible human trafficking." 

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