During the Salvadoran Civil War in the early 1980s, babies and young children were regularly seized by the army during anti-guerrilla operations, some taken by soldiers directly from their parents. Others were discovered in hiding places, apparently left behind as their families fled, and later given away for adoption. The nongovernmental organization Pro-Busqueda has helped locate 400 children since its founding in 1994 and is still searching for as many as 500 others reported missing during the 12-year war.

The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) and Clearview AI conducted an operation in Ecuador this past spring that resulted in locating and positively identifying 110 previously unknown child sexual abuse victims. The operation, held in Ecuador and hosted by ICMEC, used Clearview AI’s facial recognition technology as a main resource. Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, and the Dominican Republic were among the countries that worked together on hundreds of cold cases involving previously unknown victims of online child sexual exploitation and abuse.