LA’s sex-slave strip is growing — and Sacramento let it happen: Gov candidate

A notorious 50-block stretch of South Los Angeles where prostitution unfolds in plain sight – and vulnerable girls, including minors, are trafficked night after night – has exploded into a central flashpoint in California’s 2026 governor’s race.

The corridor, known on the street as “the Blade,” slices a roughly 3- to 4-mile path along South Figueroa Street between Imperial Highway and Gage Avenue — a bleak gauntlet of motels, liquor stores and auto shops that morphs into one of the region’s most brazen open-air sex markets after dark.

By day, it passes for just another struggling commercial strip. By night, traffic slows to a crawl as scantily clad girls, some wearing little more than thongs despite temperatures dipping into the 50s, pace the corners waiting for buyers. Traffickers hover nearby, enforcing nightly quotas that can climb to $1,500 as they collect every dollar.

To witness how the operation unfolds, The California Post embedded with Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton and an anti-trafficking outreach team, whose members requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of their work, as they combed the corridor for missing or exploited girls.

“They don’t keep a cent,” one outreach worker said. “The money goes straight to the trafficker. Then they’re taken back to a flop house during the day, often drugged, sometimes beaten, and sent right back out at night to do it all over again.”

“It is absolutely sickening,” Hilton told The Post. “Right under our noses, children are being sold for sex — and nothing’s happening, nothing’s being done, no one seems to care.”

Hilton has made the Blade a centerpiece of his campaign as Gov. Gavin Newsom prepares to leave office due to term limits, transforming the 2026 contest into a wide-open battle for control of the state. An Emerson College poll released last week showed Hilton leading a crowded GOP primary field with 17% support among likely voters.

Outreach workers describe the corridor as a human conveyor belt. “A girl can be missing in the afternoon and on this street by nightfall — swallowed up before anyone even knows where to look.”

That night’s mission was to locate girls believed to be missing — a painstaking effort that can stretch for days as volunteers move block by block, scanning faces, taking photos and cross-checking names against missing-person reports in real time.

Members of the group, which operates in trafficking hotspots worldwide, said the Blade ranks among the worst conditions they have encountered.

“We’ve worked cases in war zones, border regions and major trafficking hubs — and this is as bad as anything we’ve seen,” one team member said. “The scale, the visibility, the fact that it’s happening out in the open … it’s shocking.”

If volunteers believe they have identified a victim, they alert police immediately — but they say the window to act is painfully short. By the time officers arrive, the person may already have been moved to another corner, into a car or back to a motel.

“They move constantly, from cars to sidewalks to motels,” one member said. “If you don’t act fast, they disappear.”

Advocates say recruitment often begins with a single social-media message — a promise of money, shelter or protection — and can spiral into exploitation within hours.

In one recent case described by the team, a young girl was allegedly lured online, picked up the same day and violently assaulted before being forced onto the street. “She was hurt so bad, she couldn’t even walk into the ER,” one team member said.

Victims come from every background, volunteers stressed. “Some are middle class,” another said. “Families move to safer neighborhoods … and still end up here.”

The Blade has also become ground zero in a bitter policy fight over California’s prostitution laws.

Critics point to Senate Bill 357, a 2022 measure by lefty state Sen. Scott Wiener that eliminated arrests for loitering with intent to engage in prostitution. Wiener said the statute disproportionately harmed trafficking victims. The Los Angeles Police Protective League countered that the change was “a human sex trafficker and pimp’s dream.”

Amid mounting backlash, lawmakers later advanced AB 379, targeting buyers rather than those selling sex. But Hilton, state treasurer candidate David Serpa and outreach workers say the response still falls far short.

“These are perverts practicing modern-day slavery,” Serpa said after joining patrols along the corridor. “These men line up because they know they can get away with it. They’re preying on vulnerable girls who often have no way out.”

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman has recently intensified enforcement efforts in the area, announcing felony prosecutions of traffickers and buyers. In one high-profile case, a violent trafficker was sentenced this month after pleading guilty to human trafficking of both an adult and a minor for commercial sex.

Prosecutors said the defendant beat the victim if she questioned him, tried to leave or failed to meet demands — assaults that included punches to the face, burns from a heated metal spoon and beatings with a hanger.

“A violent sex trafficker and modern-day enslaver has been taken off the streets as a result of the tireless work of our prosecutors and the Los Angeles Police Department,” Hochman said. “The depravity of sex traffickers who prey on the most vulnerable in our community, including children, knows no bounds.”

Serpa said demand fuels the entire system. “These men line up because they know they can get away with it,” he said. “They’re preying on vulnerable girls who often have no way out.”

Hilton framed the corridor as proof of a broader breakdown in leadership.

“You’ve got politicians lecturing us about compassion … and girls being sold for sex, and they’re doing nothing about it,” he said.

“This has to stop,” Hilton said. “And when I’m governor, we’re going to put a stop to this.”

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