Angel Watch Center
The AWC is an international initiative to protect children from sexual predators traveling overseas for the purpose of sexually abusing or exploiting minors, a crime known as "child sex tourism".
The Angel Watch Center targets individuals who previously convicted of sexual crimes against a child and who may pose a potential new threat by traveling overseas to sexually abuse or exploit minors.
The Angel Watch Center plays a crucial role in HSI’s fight against global crime to protect what matters most. The Angel Watch Center uses flight data along with the National Sex Offender Registry and publicly available state sex offender websites, in coordination with the HSI Child Exploitation Investigations Unit, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the U.S. Marshals Service, to identify and alert foreign law enforcement of the sex offenders’ travel plans before their arrival. Since 2016, the Angel Watch Center has made more than 10,000 notifications to foreign countries and provided notice to the Department of State of more than 3,500 passports that requires a convicted sex offender endorsement.