As if escaping a war isn't daunting enough, Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Poland are having to deal with something else -- and a Fort Worth woman is working to put a stop to it.
Allison Byrd, 22, is attending Texas A&M Law School and also works with the nonprofit Unbound, which fights human trafficking throughout the world.
Her mentor with Unbound sent her to Poland for a week, where she helped women and children escaping the fighting in Ukraine to avoid becoming victims of human traffickers.
"Anytime there's a situation like this, there's a high risk for trafficking," Byrd tells KRLD news, "because traffickers exploit needs and vulnerabilities, which abound in a crisis like this one."
Not to mention, human traffickers are exploiting the humanitarian crisis gripping that part of the world.
"Some of these people offering transportation are great people -- generous and hospitable," says Byrd, whose father is former Fort Worth City Councilman Brian Byrd. "And others are truly bad actors. They're traffickers, and they're taking advantage of the situation."
Byrd says the stories are horrifying.
"We heard of a number of stories where traffickers had offered transportation, they had loaded up a bus full of female migrants," Byrd says, "and then had taken that bus to a warehouse where just awful forms of exploitation were happening."
With the right training, Byrd says it can actually be easy to distinguish the good Samaritans from the traffickers.
"(It's) not very hard to just go up to these men who are driving the cars (and) ask them questions," says Byrd. "And if they're a trafficker, it's pretty easy to poke holes in their story and then to redirect women from getting in their cars."
While keeping migrants safe from traffickers, Byrd also worked to help others be able to spot trafficking.
"We wanted to train our law enforcement and NGO partners in the area, so that they could be the ones long term carrying out that deterrence work," Byrd says. "We've done some law enforcement trainings, we've trained aid workers both in Poland and in Romania and equipped these teams to empower women to stay safe from trafficking."
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