Human Smugglers on the border are scamming families back in Mexico by placing fake ransom calls demanding money for the release of their relatives, even though the callers do not have the person in their captivity. 
From the AFP (via Google News):
Human smuggling gangs on the US-Mexico border are extorting thousands of dollars from families of [...]

Due to the struggling US economy and stepped up border enforcement, there are less illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border. 
From the New York Times:
A Border Patrol spokesman, Jason Cilberti, said there were significant decreases in the numbers of arrests along the nation’s southwest border, with apprehensions falling by 78 percent around Yuma, Ariz., and [...]

Spanish authorities arrested 121 people who were operating a child pron ring in Spain.
From the AP (via the IHT):
Spanish police arrested 121 people in the country’s biggest-ever crackdown on child pornography, seizing discs containing millions of video and photo files shared by a network that distributed them in 75 countries, authorities said Wednesday.
Two of the suspects [...]

The pirates in Somalia who have seized a Ukrainian ship filled with arms are stating that they only wanted to attack the ship because it was “big”. 
From the IHT:
The Somali pirates who hijacked a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition said in an interview Tuesday that they had no idea that [...]

A new law signed in California attempts to treat underage prostitutes and human trafficking victims not as criminals but as victims. 
From the AP (via San Francisco Chronicle):
In Oakland, juveniles made up most of the 27 human trafficking prostitution cases investigated there in 2006 and 2007. A San Francisco Bay Area-wide prostitution sting in 2007 caught [...]

New York Times Columnist Nichlos Kristof has a column on one woman’s fight against sex trafficking.
From the NY Times:
This is widely acknowledged to be the 21st-century version of slavery, but governments accept it partly because it seems to defy solution. Prostitution is said to be the oldest profession. It exists in all countries, and if [...]

The kidnappers of 11 Europeans and 8 Egyptians in Cairo has publicly demanded $6 million in ransom.
From the IHT:
The kidnappers of 11 European tourists and 8 Egyptians who were taken in a remote desert area of southwestern Egypt on Friday night have demanded $6 million to free them, an Egyptian government official said early Tuesday. [...]

A new report bu NGO’s in India has found that up to 10,000 children are trafficked into Northeast India each year.
From the Times of India:
Not less than 10,000 people, mostly children, are trafficked into the Northeast with a good number smuggled in from Bangladesh, Nepal and other South East Asian countries, surveys by NGOs reveal.
Most [...]

Wired Magazine blog Danger Room has a post on the growing business of Somali Pirates and the amount of revenue they produce.
From Danger Room:
This is only the latest and most headline-friendly event in worrying trend: Somali gunmen, on land and at sea, are successfully squeezing millions of dollars per month in ransoms from foreign companies [...]

The son of US Congressman Allen Boyd (D-Florida) was arrested for smuggling illegal immigrants in the state of Arizona. 
The immigrants each paid $3,000 to John Boyd to be smuggled into the United States. 
From the Tampa Tribune:
According to a criminal complaint outlining the accusations, John Boyd was driving his pickup Sunday near Wilcox, Ariz., when it [...]