Midland Sheriff's Department takes part in “Operation Lost Souls” – CBS7

MIDLAND, Texas (KOSA) -Last week, Homeland Security Investigations in El Paso announced that “Operation Lost Souls” located 70 missing children in west Texas.

Out of the 70 missing children located, 40 of them were recovered in the Midland/Odessa area. The youngest child found here was 13 years old.

That's why when the Midland County Sheriff's Office, among others, was asked to assist the answer was a resounding “How can we help?”

Most of the missing children found during operation lost souls were runaways who were victims of human trafficking and physical and sexual abuse.

Midland county sheriff David Criner says the human trafficking epidemic has always been a concern and priority to the sheriff's office in Midland.

“We're not going to let it ever not be a top priority for us here in Midland,” Criner said. “It's out there and we need to address it. Human trafficking is very important to us and we need to bring some closure to that if we can. We're always here to fight the good fight which is reducing crime like human trafficking and bring these runaways home to their parents.”

MCSO's provided names of the children missing from Midland County and focused their resources on bringing them home.

But it was truly a group effort with 29 different agencies from across west texas assisting in the investigation, including OPD,, ECSO'and both school districts in Midland and Odessa.

“It's very vital that we all work together on this because we had to cross county lines. We had to cross-jurisdiction,” Criner said. “We all worked together in order to do that. We could do some things that the city couldn't do. The city could do some things we couldn't do. The state has resources and we had resources that we could tap into to get these kids home.”

Sheriff Criner says he was thrilled and considered operation lost souls to be a success, but he added there is still more work to be done when it comes to protecting the children of west Texas.

“It is a concern of ours and that's why we're out there every day working to fight that, combat that,” Criner said. ” Of course this investigation we just had with the operation, it opened up some other doors and other things we are looking into. We're going to chase all those avenues and bring this to a closure for everybody.”

CBS7 spoke with DPS today who tells us that investigations and multi-agency operations like this one will continue to be a top priority among law enforcement.

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