Everything Sound Of Freedom Gets Wrong About The True Story

Before Tim Ballard starts adventuring through the jungle to save child trafficking victims, he works as a Department of Homeland Security agent. In that role, Ballard's job is less about finding children and more about catching perpetrators. Early in the film, Ballard has something of a crisis of faith and starts taking a new initiative in his work.

Ballard pretends to be a pedophile to get close to Ernst Oshinsky, a man he just arrested. Oshinsky eventually leads Ballard to another man named Earl Buchanan, who purchased Miguel after the boy was stolen from his family at the beginning of the movie. After separating Miguel from Buchanan, Ballard takes the young boy out for burgers, and there he becomes committed to finding Miguel's sister Rocío. The real Buchanan, however, was not a child trafficker and was instead arrested for possessing and transporting child pornography, with child molestation charges levied after by state officials.

Obviously as the hero of what's ostensibly an action movie, Ballard needs plenty of opportunities to take things into his own hands. In real life it's doubtful he did so much solo work with perpetrators while working for Homeland Security, but his dinner trip with Miguel definitely didn't happen. "A lone agent is never going to be alone like that with a victim," Erin Albright, who worked as a fellow for the Department of Justice's anti-trafficking task force, told Rolling Stone. Albright said the misrepresentation is especially galling because "What [audiences] are learning [from the film] is so divorced from reality that it does sling back to create harm."