Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery

Human Trafficking in  [USA]  [other countries]

Street Children in  [USA]  [other countries]

Child Prostitution in  [USA]  [other countries]

Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery

The United States of America (USA) [ Country-by-Country Reports ]

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimates that 50,000 people are trafficked into or transited through the U.S.A. annually as sex slaves, domestics, garment, and agricultural slaves. [map]

The United States (U.S.) is a destination country for thousands of men, women, and children trafficked largely from East Asia, Mexico, and Central America for the purposes of sexual and labor exploitation. A majority of foreign victims identified during the year were victims of trafficking for forced labor. Some men and women, responding to fraudulent offers of employment in the United States, migrate willingly—legally and illegally—but are subsequently subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude or debt bondage at work sites or in the commercial sex trade. An unknown number of American citizens and legal residents are trafficked within the country primarily for sexual servitude and, to a lesser extent, forced labor.

The U.S. Government (USG) in 2007 continued to advance the goal of eradicating human trafficking in the United States. This coordinated effort includes several federal agencies and approximately $23 million in Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 for domestic programs to boost anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts, identify and protect victims of trafficking, and raise awareness of trafficking as a means of preventing new incidents. – Adapted from U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2008 [more]

CAUTION: The following links have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in the USA. Some of these links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content.

*** FEATURED ARTICLES ***

Hotline Launched To Report Human Trafficking - 866-347-2423

Child maids now being exported to US

www.zimbio.com/AP+News/articles/7537/Child+maids+now+being+exported

Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family's crystal. She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no breaks during the day and no days off.

Once behind the walls of gated communities like this one, these children never go to school. Unbeknownst to their neighbors, they live as modern-day slaves, just like Shyima, whose story is pieced together through court records, police transcripts and interviews.

Shyima cried when she found out she was going to America in 2000. Her father, a bricklayer, had fallen ill a few years earlier, so her mother found a maid recruiter, signed a contract effectively leasing her daughter to the couple for 10 years and told Shyima to be strong.

She arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on Aug. 3, 2000, according to court documents. The family brought her back to their spacious five-bedroom, two-story home, decorated in the style of a Tuscan villa with a fountain of two angels spouting water through a conch. She was told to sleep in the garage. It had no windows and was neither heated nor air-conditioned. Soon after she arrived, the garage's only light bulb went out. The Ibrahims didn't replace it. From then on, Shyima lived in the dark. She was told to call them Madame Amal and Hajj Nasser, terms of respect. They called her "shaghala," or servant. Their five children called her "stupid."

Gov't Effort to Stem Human Trafficking Helps Very Few

But what the ads don't mention is, in order to take advantage of these benefits, victims must first agree to cooperate in the criminal Investigations of their abusers. This is not a viable option for most. Those who cooperate may face retaliation from their exploiters or risk harm to their loved ones in their homelands. For example, a Thai domestic worker who has agreed to testify against her abuser may want to bring her two children from Thailand to safety before the abuser is released from jail. He often threatened to have them killed if she were to ever seek help. Victims who come forward must also go through the arduous task of proving themselves survivors of "a severe form of trafficking." And they must demonstrate they would face extreme hardship if returned to their home country.

Young workers in the oldest profession

www.columbian.com/article/20081207/NEWS02/712079963

Sarah was 16 and addicted to crack cocaine when she heard there was easy money to make in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant off Fourth Plain Boulevard. “I went there to pick up guys,” Sarah, 22, said. “They would buy me what I wanted as long as I had sex with them.” After working for a year in Vancouver, Sarah ventured to Portland. Willowy, her greasy blond hair pulled tight into a bun, she looks exhausted. “I got here on Sandy and 82nd, and this guy, D.C., asked me if I wanted to get high,” she said one morning last summer, sitting on a curb in northeast Portland. “Then he told me I owed him money and to go get money.” Sarah was trapped. She’d fallen prey to a pimp’s come-on and become one of the 20 to 30 juveniles Portland police say work the streets at any given time. Like more than a third of those girls, she is from Vancouver. And like many of them, she remains beyond the reach of police efforts to separate her from her pimp. It’s been six years, and Sarah is still on the streets.

‘SNITCHES DIE, YOU KNOW’ - “I can cite case after case of girls coming from average families, and once the pimp was able to intervene, the family didn’t matter anymore,” Dick said. “I know of officers’ daughters who got into it, a federal prosecutor’s daughter, a DA’s daughter, a politician’s daughter.” Cherise was a rebellious 15-year-old when she met her first pimp, Deandre Green, at Lloyd Center in Portland. Green was a 25-year-old Bloods gang member from Aloha, Ore. He sweet-talked her to a nondescript, two-story motel and told her the rules: This is business, don’t be out of pocket, respect your pimp and give me all your money. According to court documents, when Cherise said she had second thoughts, Green said, “I know where you live and where your family lives. I will kill you and your family if you say anything to anybody. You’re mine now.”

Human trafficking cases increase in El Paso

Gardes showed the photograph of a field worker standing on top of a large farm truck -- a scene common across the Southwest. His name is Ricardo, she said. He was smuggled across the border in Arizona and abandoned in the desert for eight days with only three days' worth of food and water. He was found by another smuggler who offered to guide him, for a fee. When Ricardo couldn't pay, the smuggler sold him to a Florida labor contractor for $1,100. This became Ricardo's debt. He worked in a field for $80 a week to repay it. At the same time, his trafficker overcharged him for rent and other necessities. Gardes said he was never meant to be able to repay the debt. One day, another trafficking victim escaped, was recaptured and was beaten in front of Ricardo and the others. "At this point, Ricardo realized this was really slavery," Gardes said.

Sexual Slavery in Southern California Today? Epidemic, say officials

She was a teenage girl from an impoverished village in Bangladesh. The American couple offered her transport to America and a better life: a nice job as their nanny and housekeeper, wages and opportunity. The dream offer dissolved into a nightmare as soon as she reached sunny Southern California. The couple informed her she owed them a huge sum for bringing her into the country and forced her to work without wages for years in their home, where she was repeatedly raped and beaten by the husband and abused by the wife. After three failed attempts, and with the help of good Samaritans, she finally escaped.

Runaway raped, held as sex slave

Since September, the 15-year-old girl had been raped repeatedly, threatened with death and sold for sex over the Internet, police said. Her captors hid the runaway in a hollowed-out box spring covered with a piece of wood and tucked underneath a bed in a small apartment complex adjacent to Interstate 17 in west Phoenix.

*** ARCHIVES ***

Hotline Launched To Report Human Trafficking - 866-347-2423

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) TIPLINE at 866-347-2423

Child maids now being exported to US

www.zimbio.com/AP+News/articles/7537/Child+maids+now+being+exported

Young workers in the oldest profession

www.columbian.com/article/20081207/NEWS02/712079963

Forced labor operation busted - Man allegedly confiscated the women’s passports and threatened to kill their families if they left

www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/112408_Forced_labor_operation_busted.html

For the past seven years, federal authorities say, a Falls Church man forced almost a dozen female illegal immigrants from Indonesia into a form of slavery, selling their services as housekeepers to Montgomery County families. Soripada Lubis has been charged with conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants. He has been released on bail and ordered to stay at his Roosevelt Avenue home with his wife and children. It’s in that home, a federal agent said in a sworn statement, that Lubis kept between seven and 11 women at a time, sometimes sleeping two to a bed. He allegedly held the women’s passports, and threatened kill their families in Indonesia and alert immigration officials if they left him, the statement said.

Peruvian Nanny Exploited In Shocking ICE Case

www.ktvu.com/news/18012707/detail.html

Agent Welsh and ICE officials won't speak specifically about Dann's case, but the complaint alleges that in July 2006, Dann brought Zoraida Pena-Canal from Peru to Walnut Creek under a three-month visitor's visa. Investigators say Dann promised Pena she'd live in a big house with a private bathroom and would be paid up to $600 a month to care for Dann's three young boys. Instead, ICE says Pena became a virtual prisoner for almost two years. Dann, her children and Pena shared a two-bedroom apartment. Investigators say Pena was forced to sleep on the living room floor while working from dawn to dusk every day, cooking, cleaning and caring for the children. The complaint alleges Dann didn't pay Pena a salary and actually charged her $15,000 for clothing and other expenses.

Dann allegedly confiscated Pena's passport and visa and physically and verbally abused the nanny, threatening her with deportation if she talked to outsiders.

The complaint alleges Dann smashed Pena's radio and a television set, to prevent her from listening to Spanish language programs that would, quote "put ideas in her head." Investigators say Dann told Pena: "When you come to the United States, you must suffer." "They may not be physically restrained, but they're told, 'You're here illegally,'" says Special Agent Walsh. "They may not speak the language, they're told 'If you cause problems or try to get away, I'll report you to immigration and they'll put you in jail.'" Investigators say Dann even rationed Pena's food, weighing the meat she purchased and hiding fruit from Pena. Neighbors say Pena often appeared daily in the same clothes.

Connecticut Man Sentenced to 360 Months in Prison for Leading Brutal Sex Trafficking Ring That Victimized U.S. Citizens

actioncenter.polarisproject.org/the-frontlines/recent-federal-cases/326-connecticut-man-sentenced-to-

360-months-in-prison-for-leading-brutal-sex-trafficking-ring-that-victimized-us-citizens

Evidence presented at trial demonstrated that Paris operated a prostitution scheme in the Hartford, Conn., area in which he exploited young, uneducated girls from troubled backgrounds and forced them to perform commercial sex acts for his financial benefit. The evidence demonstrated that Paris used a combination of deception, fraud, coercion, brutal rapes, threats of arrest, physical violence and manipulation of addictive drugs to maintain control over his victims.

The evidence established that Paris "purchased" two of the victims from a co-defendant, Brian Forbes, who previously pleaded guilty to five counts of sex trafficking and was sentenced to 13 years in prison for his role in recruiting and exploiting minors and vulnerable young women into prostitution, as well as using beatings, rapes, drug withdrawal, threats and unlawful restraint, to compel them to perform commercial sex acts. - htcp

LAGON: Modern-day slavery

www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/06/modern-day-slavery/

A millionaire perfume maker in Islip, N.Y. was convicted and sentenced to 11 years imprisonment for committing a crime - human trafficking - that most people had never heard of just five years ago. That crime is the modern-day equivalent of slavery. In this case, the victims were two Indonesian women who were beaten, starved and never allowed out of the mansion where they worked as domestic servants.

Imprisoned in the American Nightmare

www.officer.com/print/Law-Enforcement-Technology/Imprisoned-in-the-American-Nightmare/1$43295

Like many before her, she immigrated to the United States filled with promise that she too would be part of the American dream. "When I arrived into the United States, I was happy," she recalls. "I think I'm coming to make friends, to have a good life and to make money."

But her dreams vanished as she found herself living a nightmare — trapped in a house all day, barred from speaking to anyone, and expected to work grueling hours until she collapsed into bed at night. "When I'd complain, they'd threaten me … and I feel so sad … because when I was in my own country I used to work, I made friends," she says. "Now I come here, I'm locked in the house, not talking to anyone, not going anywhere …"

Human trafficking victim speaks out in Aiken

www.nbcaugusta.com/news/southcarolina/28434359.html

Micheline Slattery talked about how at just five she was forced into slavery in her native Haiti. At 14, she was sold for $2,500 and brought to the United States. Slattery described how she was forced to do housework and essentially serve as an unpaid nanny.

"It is really tough when you have been programmed to believe you are worthless," she said. "I was like, there had to be something different, something better than what I was living. I decided I wasn't going to stay there anymore and ran away." Now Slattery is a nurse and when she can, she tells her story. "I want the world to know that slavery is not history, it still exists," she said.

Brothers Plead Guilty to Enslaving Farmworkers in Florida, Co-defendants Plead Guilty to Related Felonies

www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2008/September/08-crt-770.html

All five defendants pleaded guilty to harboring undocumented foreign nationals for private financial gain and identify theft. In addition, Cesar and Geovanni Navarrete pleaded guilty to beating, threatening, restraining and locking workers in trucks to force them to work for them as agricultural laborers. Cesar Navarrete also pleaded guilty to re-entering the U.S. after being convicted of a felony and deported, and Ismael Navarrete also pleaded guilty to document fraud. Cesar and Geovanni Navarrete face up to 35 and 25 years in prison, respectively. The other defendants face a range of 10-25 years in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for various dates in September and December 2008.

The defendants were accused of paying the workers minimal wages, driving them into debt, while simultaneously threatening physical harm if the workers left their employment before their debts had been repaid to the family.

Human trafficking in Macon? Depends on whom you ask

www.macon.com/210/story/416886.html

For one woman, human trafficking began with an advertisement promising the opportunity to work in America at a hair salon. She was assured that her travel arrangements and documents would be taken care of. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to work and earn enough money to send back home to support the woman's family and three young children. Once she reached Atlanta, however, she found herself working in a massage parlor with false travel documents. She was forced to prostitute herself to a quota of 20 men to repay traffickers about $80,000 in exaggerated travel expenses, room and board, according to an Atlanta social service agency.

Probe: Diplomats abuse their workers, invoke immunity [PDF]

modernemancipation.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=14

Federal investigators have uncovered numerous cases of foreign diplomats - mostly in New York and Washington, D.C. - who abused their domestic workers without fear of prosecution because of diplomatic immunity, according to a government report to be released tomorrow. The level of cruelty of some of the allegations appears similar to those recently uncovered in the human trafficking prosecution of Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani, the Muttontown business couple convicted of abusing two Indonesian maids. At the federal trial in Central Islip the maids, who have sued the Sabhnanis, said they were tortured and beaten, sometimes resorting to foraging for food in garbage pails. At least 42 cases of suspected abuse by diplomats – including allegations of forced labor, human trafficking and physical abuse - have been uncovered in the past eight years, the Government Accountability Office study found, according to people who have seen summaries of the document.

Sex Slaves: From Mexico to US

The female victims were as young as 14-years old. They expected a better life in America only to learn when they got here that they were sex slaves.

An indictment says three of the men -- 31-year old Juan Cortez-Meza, 34-year old Amador Cortez-Meza and 25-year old Francisco Cortez-Meza -- travelled to Mexico to seduce and befriend the females with promises of a better life in America. "Once they started dating them in Mexico they would get them to come to the US promising them jobs in restaurants or cleaning houses and then when they got here they were forced into prostitution," said Assistant United States Attorney Susan Coppedge.

The indictment says "The victims were beaten, threatened, or their families back in Mexico were threatened in order to force the victims to work as prostitutes against their will."

Indian workers' struggle shines light on human trafficking, slave labor

The plight of immigrant Indian workers who were deceived into virtual slavery has brought attention to the vile practice of human trafficking. Indian workers protest slave-like conditions before the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., June 11. The workers took jobs with Signal International to work on the U.S. Gulf Coast following the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The Indian workers were told they would receive "green cards," allowing them permanent legal residence in the United States. Many who left their families behind in search of better wages had been told they would be able to bring their relatives. The promises were all lies. Instead of receiving permanent legal status, the workers—who had paid fees of up to $20,000 to Signal—received 10-month H-2B temporary worker visas. The workers were essentially trapped, and their employers knew it. Their documents were stolen and wages were withheld. For all practical purposes, slavery had returned to Louisiana.

Modern slavery global scourge, speakers tell CBF supporters

The woman came over from China expecting love, marriage and a better life, according to a speaker on human trafficking June 19, during a workshop session at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in Memphis, Tenn. But she wasn’t allowed to leave her house for three years. Her husband was the only one who ever told her she was beautiful and loved, said Paul Lange, executive director of Oasis USA. She had a twisted loyalty; at times she felt loved and dedicated to her husband, but most days he abused her. He seized her documents so she couldn’t leave, Lange said. Instead of the freedom she sought, she became a captive in her own house.

Researchers Issue Report on Human Trafficking

A team of researchers at Northeastern University’s Institute on Race and Justice, in collaboration with Arizona State University and Sam Houston State University, has issued a report about the incidence of and response to human trafficking in the United States. Lead by principal investigators Assistant Professor Amy Farrell, Ph.D., and Associate Dean Jack McDevitt, the researchers conducted a random survey of law enforcement agencies throughout the United States to better understand how agencies identify and respond to suspected cases of human trafficking. Previous research has provided limited information on human trafficking cases, from specific jurisdictions, while this survey provides the first comprehensive national look at how local, state and county law enforcement agencies respond to human trafficking.

The report, entitled “Understanding and Improving Law Enforcement Responses to Human Trafficking,” was made possible by a grant from the National Institute of Justice and is now available online … Full Report [PDF] … Executive Summary [PDF]

Fulton judge, deputy son charged with human trafficking

A former Fulton County magistrate judge, his Forsyth County Sheriff's deputy son and the deputy's wife have all been charged with human trafficking, among other charges, for their part in allegedly forcing an Indian nanny to work without pay in their Woodstock home beginning in 2003. The suit also alleges they then used their influence to hassle her after she escaped with the help of a neighbor.

The charges against the three allege the Garretts later stopped paying the victim for her work as a nanny, significantly curtailed her freedom and ability to leave their home, and threatened to malign her to her family in India if she did not work for them. The woman was reportedly forced to work more than 16 hours a day, every day, under a barrage of insults, intimidation and threats of jail and deportation. With the assistance of a neighbor, the victim escaped the Garretts' home, said Nahmias.

In addition, the indictment alleges that after the victim escaped, the Garretts falsely accused her of theft to local authorities, reported her illegal status to federal authorities and falsely accused her of engaging in terrorism-related activities to the Department of Homeland Security.

One woman who operates a shelter in northwest MO speaks out

"We have dealt with many cases where as the girls are brought in as mail-order brides, when they got here basically they were used for prostitution and pornographic purposes," said Cheryl Leffler, who operates a women's shelter in northwest Missouri for more then 10 years.

"They usually start with just written correspondence with them, and after they have pretended to be the perfect person they get the girls to trust them," said Leffler. Traffickers promise the world to potential victims and pay for their plane ticket to Kansas City. Traffickers then take them to their home, where the horrific experience begins. "They had been traumatized. Their first sexual experience had basically been brutally raping them to get them under control," states Leffler, "'This is what's going to happen to you if you don't do what I tell you.' They thoroughly believe these guys will kill them."

Grand Jury Indicts Human Trafficking Suspect

Police say Walker lured two women to Lexington then forced them to work at a strip club then took their money. The women also say Walker tried to keep them from leaving.

Man Sentenced for Human Trafficking and Alien Smuggling

Corea lured young Central American women to the United States with promises of good jobs. However, once the young women arrived, they were forced to work in the bars and cantinas of the defendant and co-defendants selling high-priced drinks to male customers. The women were subjected to numerous threats of harm to themselves and family members in order to compel their servitude, and some suffered sexual assaults at the hands of the defendant and his co-defendants.

Former Human Trafficking Victim Speaks Out

HAWAII - This young Tongan named Francis came here in 2001, Lueleni Maka promised him $240 a week. He was paid only $20. "I ask him about the rest of my money. Said he sent em back to my family, so I called my parents and they said they never get nothing from him," said former victim Francis.

Maka told Francis he would turn him into immigration if he tried to escape the pig farm he stayed at. "He make me afraid of him. He hit me a couple of times. yeah. metal frames, I get scars on my back from him. Get guys they worse than me. He beat 'em up till blood coming out their mouth and nose. it's very sad. We cannot do nothing. we so scared of him," Francis said.

Sentences given in human trafficking plot

Members of a human trafficking ring have been sentenced for a conspiracy to smuggle Central American women into the United States and keep them in forced labor. Eight defendants were convicted in Houston in connection with a scheme to force the women to work in restaurants, bars and cantinas in the Houston area. The defendants were accused of planning to use threats of harm to the victims and their families to keep them from escaping before they paid off their smuggling debts.

How an eastern Iowa teen prostitution, human trafficking ring took root

In the basement of an ordinary-looking Williamsburg home, the 13-year-old girl was given a choice. Either she would have sex with two men nearly twice her age or she would be given back to her kidnapper. Already in the week since Demont Bowie told the suburban Minneapolis girl she belonged to him, he'd beaten and abused her, starved her and deprived her of sleep. He traded her body to his friends and even a mechanic. When Demont told her to do something to someone, she did. There was no refusing. He'd said he'd kill her, kill her family, if she tried to leave. - htcp

3 Arrested On Suspicion Of Human Trafficking

According to the complaints, the victims were forced to work nearly 24 hours a day and were advised that it would be necessary for them to work for several years while they repaid their "travel debt." The victims allegedly were threatened, and their passports were kept from them.

Sex victim gives voice to problem

At 15, Theresa Flores was a self-described "blond, white girl" from an upper-class Detroit suburb and went out on date with a boy she knew from school. That night she was attacked and raped as the boy’s cousins took photos. It was the beginning of an agonizing two years for Flores. Her attackers - members of a gang - blackmailed her with the threat of revealing the photos and forced her to become a sex slave. Fearing for her life, she escaped only after her family moved from the state, taking her with them. "You don’t think that it happens here" in the suburbs, "and until it hits you between the eyes, you don’t realize it," she said. "But it can happen to anybody."

Human trafficking steps from the shadows

Describing herself as "a nice Catholic girl who lived in a large, suburban house" near Detroit during her teenage years, she said she was targeted by traffickers, drugged, and date-raped at the age of 15 - "I was just a kid," she said - and then blackmailed and forced to work as a prostitute "for two long years."

"They said they would kill me and my family and my dog if I didn't do what they said," reported Flores, adding that she was "beaten into silence every night" by her captors. Throughout her ordeal, she said, she was permitted to live at home, sneaking out every night to turn tricks, and then returning home and going to school the next day. Once, she said, she was kidnapped, taken to inner-city Detroit, and "tortured for hours and hours and left for dead" before being returned to her emotionally absent parents by an unsympathetic police officer. Only when her father moved the family to another city after a job transfer, she said, did she finally break with her captors.

Indian Workers Accuse Signal International Of "Human Trafficking"

They talk of living "like pigs in a cage" in a company-run "work camp." "I've been a guest worker all my life. I've never seen these kinds of conditions," said the interpreter, "We lived 24 people to a room. And for this, the company deducted $1,050 a month from our paychecks."

Man Pleads Guilty In 'Kennel Case' Rape

The accused ringleader behind a horrific 2005 kidnapping and rape case pleaded guilty on Friday to six charges after admitting his role, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas said.

The 15-year-old victim was kidnapped, gang raped and during her 42-day captivity, forced to engage in acts of prostitution, Thomas said. She was mostly confined to a dog kennel, Thomas said.

Website Content Calls for Action to Combat Human Trafficking

That reality hit home for one Chicago area family when their 17-year-old daughter was abducted and forced into prostitution. It would be seven years before she was found. The teenager had decided to delay her college plans and answered an advertisement seeking a nanny, recalls Ruth Hill, executive minister of Women Ministries, who knows one of the girl’s cousins. The girl was kidnapped as soon as she arrived at the home for the job interview. Five years later, the girl was able to slip out a postcard saying she was being held at a bar in Cincinnati, but her captors had moved her by the time law enforcement arrived. It would be another two years before the FBI found her - addicted to heroin and pregnant.

Georgia Man Sentenced to 15 Years on Sex Trafficking and Mann Act Charges

"Defendant Jones' sentence sends a clear message that those who traffic in people will be harshly punished," said U.S. Attorney David E. Nahmias. "Defendant Jones preyed on numerous young American women who fell for his fraudulent 'modeling' scheme, signed contracts in which they owed the defendant money, then were forced and coerced into prostitution to pay back the contracts. The case broke when two victims were brave enough to come forward and report Jones' crimes to APD, whose human trafficking task force worked closely with the FBI in bringing justice to the victims."

Numerous victims were on hand for the sentencing and testified that Jones caused them to engage in sex acts, including oral sex and vaginal intercourse, with himself and others, by striking them and threatening to beat them. One victim submitted her statement to the court, outlining the abuse she suffered at the hands of Jones and stating that Jones was "a cruel and manipulative man whose life revolved around the sexual,emotional, physical and psychological exploitation of young women." She stated that her life was devastated and that she even considered suicide on more than one occasion to escape Jones' brutality.

Brothel/human trafficking operation discovered in Tumon [Guam]

Officers went to the Blue Room in Upper Tumon where they found a mini-brothel. Police believe the girls were brought over from Chuuk, under false pretenses that they would be working at a restaurant. Instead, they would be forced to work in the brothel, as their passports were allegedly withheld by the owners of the establishment, who are Korean.

Three get max sentences for roles in human trafficking ring

A federal judge in Trenton today sentenced three people to the maximum sentences allowed for their role in a human trafficking ring that smuggled young women from Honduras and forced them into indentured servitude working in Hudson County bars.

The Rosales-Martinez sisters admitted they helped oversee dozens of illegal Hondurans who were forced to work six days a week and live in cramped Hudson County apartments until they could repay smuggling fees as high as $20,000. The immigrants earned $5 an hour, plus tips, by dancing and drinking with male patrons at bars in Union City and Guttenberg. One ring member said the girls were encouraged to prostitute themselves; another said they were beaten if they ignored the house rules. Another told agents she was forced to ingest abortion pills after ringleaders learned she was pregnant. The baby was born in a toilet and died.

A Tennessee man is in jail in Lexington, after being charged with human trafficking

45-year-old Calvin Walker was arrested yesterday morning at the Catalina Motel and charged with two counts of human trafficking for allegedly forcing two women to work at a local strip club, then taking their money.

The women say he lured them here from Tennessee, then when they tried to leave, he took their identification and their money.

Four Accused Of Human Trafficking, Prostitution

www.wben.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=08937

Federal agents conducted early morning raids at four massage parlors and accupressure locations the government says were fronts for prostitution and human trafficking. U.S. Attorney Terry Flynn says the four suspects charged large amounts of money to women in Asia who wanted to come to the United States. The women were forced to pay back the fees by performing sex for money inside those spas, says Flynn.

Human trafficking more common in Ca.

California is the top destination in the U.S. for people who force women and girls into hard labor and sex trade. U.C. Berkeley researchers found 57 forced labor operations over a five year period, in about a dozen California cities, involving more than 500 people from 18 countries.

Sex slaves, human trafficking ... in America?

In spring of 2004, Katya (not her real name), like thousands of other foreign exchange university students, was looking forward to the summer job placement that she and a friend had received in Virginia Beach, Va. When she and her friend Lena arrived at Dulles Airport after a long flight from Ukraine, they were relieved to be met by fellow countrymen who spoke Russian.

“When we got to the hotel in Detroit, everything changed,” says Katya. “They closed the door and sat us down on the couch, took our passports and papers and said, ‘You owe us big money for bringing you here.’ They gave us strip clothes and told us that we were going to be working at a strip club called Cheetahs.”

Georgia Wrestler Forced Women In Sexual Servitude

In addition to forcing the victims to work as prostitutes, Norris made the women work in and around his two homes in Cartersville. Witnesses testified that Norris required the victims to haul trees, lay sod, and paint. The evidence at trial further established that Norris set strict rules and fined the women for such infractions as talking too much or failing to exercise. In addition, he kept the women financially indebted to him by charging them for food, medicine, and cigarettes. Norris then told the victims that they could not leave until their debts were paid, all the while continuing to increase the debt he claimed he was owed.

Human trafficking often below radar in Columbus

Human-trafficking cases in Columbus are rare, but when they occur, they aren't likely to be reported to law-enforcement agencies.

"In four of the five labor-trafficking cases, service providers indicated that, although they knew whom in law enforcement to contact about trafficking victims, they could not take the chance that the disclosure could lead to negative consequences for their clients," researchers wrote in their report, released last month. Language barriers and the fear of arrest and deportation were among the reasons that human-trafficking cases go unreported, the study found. "For the undocumented, the overriding concern is about immigration status," said Angie Plummer, executive director of the Community Refugee and Immigration Service, one of the groups interviewed by researchers. "There is a reluctance to present victims to officials who have the right and ability to turn them over to (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)."

Human Trafficking

www.abcactionnews.com/content/segments/investigators/story.aspx?content_id=c8fc0810-e3d1-4596-b37f-683df06b8bbb

"Sue" says she ran away from a foster home at 13. She met a man in his 40's who promised her free rent, meals and a job. After a few months, "Sue" says things changed, drastically. "He started beating me with sticks, poles, knives, hammers. It really got out of control. So besides fighting the street you had to fight this non-human. i was told, if we left, he was gonna hunt us down, and, you know, kill us."

"Sara" says the traffickers who held her poured gasoline on her while they held a match. "They kicked and stomped on me. They dragged me by the hair. Fifteen guys circled me and stomped on me."

Ukraine woman forced to dance at strip club testifies in D.C.

Lured from the Ukraine with the promise of a student visa, the young woman believed she was headed to the U.S. to study and to Virginia Beach to work as a waitress -- not to Detroit, where she was forced to dance at a strip club. Using the alias "Katya" to protect herself, the 22-year-old woman spoke publicly for the first time today, describing to a congressional panel how she was forced to work at the Detroit club for months until she and another young woman escaped with the help of one of the patrons of the club. "They forced me to work six days a week for 12 hours a day," she said of the men who made her work at Cheetah's in Detroit. "I could not refuse to go to work or I would be beaten." While she was forced to dance at the strip club, she said she was not made to be a prostitute.

Houston major hub for human trafficking

The picture, with its implicit threat, was all it took. It was taken just before Christmas 2004. She had been thinking about running away from the windowless bar on Houston's northwest side, where he kept her and other women, forcing some of them into prostitution while they paid off their "debts."

But Maximino "Chimino" Mondragon knew of her plans. Carrying a camera and Christmas presents for the woman's daughter, he had appeared unannounced at her family's home in El Salvador. The woman, who was not identified by authorities, told investigators that Mondragon had talked his way into the home by saying the gifts were from her. "By the way," Mondragon reportedly asked her parents, "would you mind taking a photo of me with the little girl?" There were no more plans of escaping.

With similar threats, Mondragon and a network of family members and associates operated one of the largest human trafficking rings in U.S. history in which as many as 120 women were held captive and coerced to work off their smuggling debts. Some of the women were raped and forced to have abortions.

Slavery in my backyard and a thousand points of light

(At the lecture) Coonan also said that it’s happening within the Chinese community as well, with traffickers promising young women a better life in America. According to Coonan, in nearby Quincy, a Chinese restaurant has Hispanic women working there and living in a small shed behind the restaurant. Many of these restaurants also have their employees living in the kitchen after hours as well.

“I think the most shocking thing is that everything is close to home,” said Danielle May, who attended the lecture. “This is not something that you see on the international news being in Cambodia, or Thailand. This issue is happening at home. I think it’s scary. Quincy is 45 minutes away and people are being enslaved. This is shocking that this is 2007 and slavery is still going on.”

Md. Cracks Down On Human Trafficking

One who escaped told her story with the condition that she not be identified. "We were kept in one room, me and my daughters," said the woman. Their passports taken, her children were forced to work in the home without pay while she worked on the outside. "We've had a number of significant cases in the Washington suburbs, mostly women, who have been held in basements doing labor at no charge. Domestic labor," said Rod Rosenstein, U.S. Attorney for Maryland.

A Modern Slavery

It took 12 years for Martina Okeke to break free. After moving from Nigeria to New York in 1988, she cooked, cleaned and took care of a Staten Island couple's children on the promise of a $300 monthly wage and tuition help for her kids back home. She never received a penny. Friends from Okeke's church finally convinced her to leave the family, but she refused to report them to the authorities. "I did not want to have a bad name," she told a reporter from the New York Times.

In June 2001, two Indonesian women, who paid $3,000 each for a falsified visa, airline tickets from Jakarta and the promise of a well-paying restaurant job in New York, escaped from a Brooklyn brothel. They had arrived in New York only to find that their "debt" had increased to $30,000. The men waiting for them at the airport also threatened to kill them if they refused to work as prostitutes, according to the Brooklyn Rail.

Cary's Neo-China accused of 'human trafficking'

According to a lawsuit filed in Wake County court, Neo-China's parent company, Freshco Inc., sponsored Amu Zheng and his wife and son to come to the United States in 2001. Under immigration law, employers can sponsor someone for a green card if they can offer a full-time position. Once in the country, Zheng alleges, Neo-China's owner Diana Yu and manager Chris Chang told Zheng and his family that they had to work at the restaurant "at whatever terms they imposed"—more than 90 hours a week at less than minimum wage.

Antipoopoo's (FMW'S) Backyard

HUMAN TRAFFICKING: A MILLION-DOLLAR INDUSTRY IN DESTIN - She was 19, petite and brunette. She was from Eastern Europe and had been in the United States for less than a month. Promised a job as a housekeeper at a hotel or condominium in Okaloosa County, she instead found herself stripping at a local topless bar. She had to borrow a costume and when she hit the dance floor, she moved without rhythm or style, as if her body and her mind were in two different places. This isn’t what she came to the United States to do.

Man Sentenced On Child Prostitution Charge

A man was sentenced to five years in prison Friday in a case where federal prosecutors have said a child was essentially bought and sold for crack cocaine

Prosecutors said Geiler took a 17-year-old girl to Gray's house in January. He told Gray the girl owed him money, and he left her with Gray so she could work as a prostitute to pay off her debt. They say Gray ultimately let the girl leave with another person who promised him crack.

Three charged in hair salon human trafficking ring

The women lived in crowded apartments rented by the alleged ringleaders in Newark and East Orange, sleeping 8-10 to an apartment and sleeping on tattered mattresses on the floor, Manifase said. Victims told investigators their travel documents were taken from them and they were threatened with return to Africa if they objected to working without pay, authorities said.

Man Pleads Guilty as Trial is About to Begin on Federal Sex Trafficking and Mann Act Charges

Wan J. Kim, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights; David E. Nahmias, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia; Gregory Jones, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Richard Pennington, Chief, Atlanta Police Department, today announced that Jimmie Lee Jones, also known as "Mike Spade," 31, of Stone Mountain, Georgia, pleaded guilty yesterday to federal charges of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking and transporting young women across state lines for purposes of prostitution. Just after his trial began, Jones admitted to U.S. District Court Judge William S. Duffey, Jr. that he had lured and coerced eight young women -- including two juveniles -- into prostitution.

"The defendant in this case took advantage of numerous young women by enticing them with promises of modeling contracts and then using force, threats, and coercion to force them to work as prostitutes," said Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim.

AMW Fugitive Data File For Maribel Rodriguez Vasquez

BOGUS JOB OFFER ENTICES GUATEMALAN GIRL TO U.S. - Jane Doe told authorities that after a month of working as a babysitter, Vasquez turned the tables and began forcing her into a life of prostitution. According to Doe, when she refused to become a sex slave, Vasquez threatened to kill the family she left behind in Guatemala. Doe also recalled that Vasquez forced her to see a so-called witch doctor who cast spells and foretold bad fortune if she ever tried to escape or told anyone about the prostitution ring.

RP diplomat: No human trafficking in case filed by maid

According to the Associated Press, under the plea, Reyes must pay Gado about $78,000 to make up the difference between what she was paid and what she was supposed to get under her contract. Gado had claimed she was promised $8 per hour for a 40-hour workweek and $12 an hour for overtime, but was paid $250 a month, pay that was increased to $325 in July 2006 when she was required to begin caring for the Reyeses’ infant granddaughter.

'Slave trade' growth prompts action in FW

The International Chiefs of Police Association delves into the secret world of human trafficking; and one officer has managed to breach te walls and delve into that world. He is one of few who work in the new Fort Worth Anti-Human Trafficking Division.

"You can buy a human being out on the street for $90 and put him to work as a slave," the undercover said. Women, men, boys and girls are forced into prostitution. Some can end up having sex with different men every 15 minutes while others are purchased to work on farms or restaurants for little to no money.

"Some of them are put to sleep in garages," the officer said. "They're locked up in closets. They're being fed very minimal. Especially, the females are being verbally abused, physically abused."

US hands Lithuanian 7-year-sentence for human trafficking

Michail Aronov, 34, and his business partners "smuggled women into the United States and compelled them through threats and coercion to work as dancers in strip clubs, holding them in a condition of involuntary servitude," the department said in a statement. The human trafficking network used the guise of a legitimate business, Beauty Search Inc., to cover their criminal conduct, it added.

"These criminals preyed upon the hopes and dreams of women who came to the US for a better life, but found only enslavement, exploitation, violence and isolation," special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of investigations in Detroit said in the statement.

Blacks enslaving blacks in 2008

[mssg #81] Elizabeth, 54, was meted a three-year jail term by the U.S. court after pleading guilty to a charge of forced labor. The judge noted that Ruiz was made to sleep on a dog bed and work 18 hours a day. Too, while she cleaned and provided fresh food to the pets of the Jacksons, she was only given three-day old food for her meals. After working several months for the Jacksons, Ruiz only got $300 as payment and was even threatened by the Jacksons that she would be turned over to the immigration authorities should she try to leave them.

Christian Medical Association Doctors: U.S. Government Must Link AIDS, Anti-Trafficking Efforts

Highlighting a just-published study showing that sex slaves spread AIDS even after their rescue from human trafficking overlords and pimps, the nation's largest faith-based association of doctors today called for more concerted U.S. government action related to the link between AIDS and human trafficking.

Dr. Barrows said, "Health officials have just begun to recognize this link, and stronger emphasis is needed. Interventions aimed at eradicating sex trafficking, rescuing and restoring sex-trafficked victims, and preventing future sex trafficking need to be a more strongly emphasized strategy in the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and other AIDS-related programs. Anti-trafficking measures should be specifically and consistently emphasized in AIDS-related grant stipulations and proposal evaluations."

Enslaved in the U.S.A. - American victims need our help

President Bush made combating human trafficking a priority. Both Attorney Generals Ashcroft and Gonzales have spoken out against trafficking in the U.S. and made the investigation and prosecution of trafficking a priority. Most of the focus on identifying and assisting victims and prosecuting offenders has been on foreign nationals trafficked into the U.S. There are more American citizens than foreign nationals victimized by sex traffickers in the U.S., yet there are no federally funded services for them, particularly if they are over age 17.

Company Accused Of Human Trafficking

Workers from Thailand say they've been made into economic slaves by the company that brought them to our area. They're 20 men from Thailand who for the past year have picked mushrooms in Armstrong County. They say they often did not get paid and now they must return home where they will face enormous debt.

Venture into an abandoned limestone mine in Armstrong County and you'll find hundreds of workers picking mushrooms in the dark. It's tough work and not enough locals wanted the job so last year Creekside Mushrooms hired 20 legal guest workers from Thailand through a California company called Global Horizons. Under the contract, Creekside paid Global but soon discovered that Global wasn't paying the workers for long stretches of time. Some nights, the men had to go fishing after work just to feed themselves.

"We made multiple phone calls to the president of the company who then chose not to return any of my calls or emails and the gentlemen just weren't getting paid," Domenic Galassi, an official with Creekside Mushroom, said. And Galassi says their situation has become even more dire. He says each man paid upwards of $20,000 to a recruiter in Thailand to come to America on Global's promise of three years employment.

3 Arrested in Human Trafficking

Some factors taken into consideration to file criminal charges against these individuals included allegations of victims receiving rationed meals of limited quantity, the acrobat performers not being paid the salary they were promised, their passports and work visas being held from them, enforcers watching and controlling the movements of the performers, and a fear of the performers that their families in China, as well as themselves, would be harmed if they attempted to leave.

Nevada man sentenced to life in prison on charges related to the sex trafficking of minors

The evidence at trial showed that during the first two weeks of May 2005, Doss conspired with his wife, Jacquay Quinn Ford, to transport two girls across state lines to work as prostitutes. Doss and Ford transported the victims -- one 14 and one 16 -- from Nevada to work as prostitutes in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco and Oakland. Doss recruited and transported the 16-year-old victim by the use of force.

Las Vegas Acrobatic Troupe Busted For Human Trafficking

On Friday, the FBI and Metro descended near Desert Inn and Grand Canyon. That's where authorities say they found four adults and five juveniles being held against their will.

State struggles with legal, moral aspects of human trafficking

"I saw the victims in the brothels," said state Rep. Joanne Giannini, recalling that many of the prostitutes were minors. "A lot of people think that it doesn't exist." Giannini said when police have raided these facilities the women refused emergency social and medical services. "They are afraid of getting into trouble," she said.

According to Garry Bliss, director of policy and legislative affairs for Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, efforts have been made to provide counseling and social services to the women, but they rejected them, fearing retribution from their captors – the owners of the establishments who reap big profits.

He believes most of the women to be in their 20s or 30s, and said some have probably been in this country for some time, being moved constantly from state to state. They are initially enslaved to pay off debts incurred in traveling to the United States. Often, they have come to this country assuming that they are to work as housekeepers or nannies. "It's a hole that they can never dig themselves out of," Bliss said. "These women are not acting on their own free will."

Middle Tennessee sees rise in human trafficking

GIRLS LURED INTO SEX TRADE - As a result of November's arrests, Nashville resident Cristina Andres Perfecto pleaded guilty to two counts of commercial sex trafficking and admitted luring two Mexican girls to the United States by telling them they would be employed at a restaurant in Nashville.

Perfecto admitted she knew all along that the girls, who were 13 and 17, would be coerced to engage in prostitution in brothels in Memphis and Nashville. Perfecto said physical force and threats against the victims and their families were used to force the girls to engage in prostitution.

Woman Pleads Guilty to Human Trafficking Related Charges

Olga Mondragon is a 47-year-old El Salvadoran national. She and her co-defendants conspired with others to smuggle female illegal aliens from Central America to Houston. Once in Houston, Olga Mondragon, working with other co-defendants held the women and girls in a condition of servitude in bars owned by the conspirators until the women had paid their smuggling debts to the defendants. The defendants used threats of harm to the women and their families to keep the women in a condition of servitude. Specifically, Olga Mondragon and her co-defendants threatened that the women's families or children would pay the consequences if any of the young women attempted to leave before paying their smuggling debts, including threats of kidnapping and threats to report the young women to dangerous co-conspirators who could have people killed or burn people's houses down.

Falling Short of the Mark: An International Study on the Treatment of Human Trafficking Victims [PDF]

UNITED STATES - The United States is complying with its international obligations under the Trafficking Protocol for the protection of victims of human trafficking. Increasing approval rates for victims seeking residency and support are encouraging signs that the system is working and not being abused. The integration of government and civil society support, which receives some government funding as well, has had encouraging results. There are some concerns about the needs of child victims which warrant attention, as well as the degree of pressure put on victims to cooperate with law enforcement officials.

RESIDENCE - Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (.TVPA.)78 and Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (.TVPRA.),79 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security may issue .T-Visas. to allow victims of .severe forms of human trafficking. To remain in the country in order to provide assistance in federal investigations and prosecutions of those responsible for the harm they have suffered. After three years of having T-Visa status, victims may apply for permanent residency. Victims may, in some cases, also apply for non-immigrant status for their spouses and children; or, in the case of victims under 21 years old, their parents.

Details emerge in human trafficking case in San Antonio

How's $600 to buy what you'd like simply for accompanying men on trips? We can make it happen, al otro lado — on the other side. That pitch allegedly made by a trio of women sounded like gold to some impressionable teens and a young woman not making much in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Three girls agreed to be smuggled to the United States in mid-May and once they were in or near San Antonio, they were primped, new clothes were bought for them and they were given English lessons. Their understanding was that they did not have to have sex with the men.

But rather than the glitz they were promised, they were sold in an underground world for prostitution, according to prosecutors and documents filed in federal court Friday. The girls were delivered to a man in San Antonio referred to in court records as the "boss," who had them strip, inspected their bodies and told them they were going to be having sex with men for up to five years to pay off their smuggling debt. The "boss" said he had paid $3,000 apiece for two of the girls and said he would pay even more to get them ready for other men, witnesses told investigators, according to their statements. Anyone who fled would die, and their families would also suffer the same fate, the statements said. - HTUSAMX

Laws Block Trafficking; Sexual Terror Ignored

The report found that half of all states' laws now make trafficking a felony, nine state laws provide restitution to victims and 11 states enacted laws providing for victim protection. Many Midwestern states, including Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska, had additional laws such as those to regulate travel service providers that facilitate sex tourism.

Report Card on State Action to Combat International Trafficking [PDF]

Each state therefore received fi ve letter grades, one for each type of law — criminalization, victim protection and services, statewide interagency task force, regulation of international marriage brokers, and regulation of travel service providers that promote sex tourism. Each state’s individual report card includes a brief analysis of the state’s legislation and includes recommendations for improvements.

Fourth Chinese National Pleads Guilty to Trafficking-Related Charge

Each defendant acknowledged in his or her plea having a role in recruiting and arranging travel and immigration documents for Chinese females to travel to American Samoa to engage in prostitution. Upon arrival, the victims, who were unpaid, were denied access to their passports and return airline tickets, and were denied the opportunity to leave until they had paid off increasing debts.

Beatings, Isolation and Fear: The Life of a Slave in the U.S.

Evelyn Chumbow was once a slave, but not in some distant country. She worked right here in the United States. Chumbow, now 21, was brought to suburban Maryland in 1996 from her native Cameroon by Theresa Mubang. Mubang promised Chumbow's family that if 11-year-old Evelyn came to America, she would have the prospect of a bright future and a first-rate education, as she had been a top student in her native country.

Wealthy N.Y. Couple Charged With Slavery

The women, prosecutors said, were subjected to beatings, had scalding water thrown on them and were forced to repeatedly climb up stairs as punishment for perceived misdeeds. In one case, prosecutors said, one of the women was forced to eat 25 hot chili peppers at one time.

One of the women also told authorities they were forced to sleep on mats in the kitchen and were fed so little, they had to steal food.

The women legally arrived in the United States on B-1 visas in 2002; the Sabhnanis then confiscated their passports and refused to let them leave their home, authorities said. Identified in court papers as Samirah and Nona, the women said they were promised payments of $200 and $100 a month, but federal prosecutors said they were never given money directly. One of the victims' daughters living in Indonesia was sent $100 a month, prosecutors said.

Human Trafficking on Long Island, NY

The Long Island group was born in the fall of 2004, just months after the arrests of a couple on Long Island in what was then considered one of the largest human-trafficking cases in the country.

Mariluz Zavala and her husband, Jose Ibanez, later pleaded guilty to smuggling 69 fellow Peruvian immigrants and enslaving them in Amityville, Brentwood and Coram. Both are in prison; Zavala was given 15 years, even longer than prosecutors asked for.

Most Wanted Women: Human Trafficking Mastermind

The Federal Bureau of Investigations says this Guatemalan national lured twelve women -- three mere minors -- with the promise of the American dream. "What they would do is go to these countries to the rural areas and recruit women with the promise here and making good money." After crossing the border, promised dreams quickly turned in to nightmares as the victims were forced into street prostitution to work off their smuggling fee.

"Often times they were physically abused if they tried to leave they were beaten up."

Trafficking victims spurn help

But local investigators are finding that victims of human trafficking don't surface easily.

In the six months since World Relief got a $450,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to help survivors in the region, none have been found.

Human trafficking called a concern for N. Texas

Given Kachepa, 20, of Zambia said he was lured out of his country nine years ago by a Sherman-based Christian group that promised him a better life in the United States. When he and 10 other boys got here, they were organized into a choir that toured the nation, earning large fees for the ministry.

Regardless of sickness or fatigue, they were required to perform up to seven concerts a day, with no payment.

"If we did not sing, the choir manager would say, 'No singing, no food,' and he would turn off the gas for the stove so we couldn't cook," Mr. Kachepa said. "Sometimes we went for three days without having anything to eat."

Modern day slave trade: Human trafficking continues, even in the U.S.

According to a report published on the Central Intelligence Agency Web site, “International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery and Organized Crime,” 45,000-50,000 women and children are brought to the United States as slaves every year. The document also reported that the majority of these victims come from Latin American and Southeast Asia, although there has been a recent influx of trafficking from Central and Eastern Europe. “After drug dealing, trafficking of humans is tied with arms dealing as the second largest criminal industry in the world, and is the fastest growing,” states the United States Department of Health & Human Services Web site.

Modern-Day Slavery in America

Yes, There Are Slaves in the United States, and the Problem Is Getting Worse.

Emily Nicely, 19, was routinely beaten with broom handles, a metal pipe, belts and wooden boards. She was forced to quit school, to do chores and deliver newspapers without pay. She was by any definition - including those of the federal government and the family that held her captive for six months - a slave.

Man charged with human trafficking

Carter said human trafficking "is something that is coming to our attention more due to the fact that we have a growing diverse population within Hillsborough County that could potentially be victims." Victims generally do not report the crime, because they are in the country illegally, she said.

State mobilizes to fight human trafficking

The problem: Trafficking has proved hard to detect. Victims typically fear retribution and clam up, experts say. Unlike smuggling, trafficking involves confiscation of travel documents and other coercion. The U.S. State Department estimates 14,500 to 17,500 foreign workers are brought into the country each year via trafficking - part of a $9 billion global criminal trade exceeded only by illegal arms and drug dealing.

The victims of human trafficking

“I felt more like a slave,” he told 11 News in Spanish. While often invisible, the stories are strikingly similar. “They were making sure I was so scared so that I wouldn’t walk out, or immigration would come get me. “It was really hard for more it was tiring my feet had blisters,” Diego said.

At just 14, Diego journeyed alone from Honduras to El Paso with an American dream, one that quickly turned into a nightmare when ranchers took him in and forced him to clean stalls seven days a week, he said.

WJZ Investigates Sex Trafficking

wjz.com/local/local_story_054143021.html

19-year-old Chantee was hanging out with two friends in downtown Baltimore. They decided to go for a ride with an older man, who was a friend of a friend. They thought they were going for a joy ride, but it would become much more than that.

Human trafficking and slavery still active practices

People can be sold repeatedly, Atkinson said. This creates a tier of markets and prices, based on how worn a person has become in the sex or labor trade, he said. In the sex trade, people get sold overseas when they reach the lower prices. “From there, they die and never come back,” he said.

Human Trafficking Plaguing Maryland

Lidia and her daughters came to Maryland from Asia to get married to a man they thought they could trust. But when the three arrived, he made them his personal servants. He beat them and fed them only once a day. "We were kept in one room, me and my daughters", said Lidia. The man also seized their passports, and while Lidia was forced to work outside the home for no money her children did house chores. "Each day I came home I had a scary feeling, that I might not see my kids."

Human Trafficking Victims May be Hidden in Plain Sight

They are kidnapped, branded and forced into prostitution. Or they are lured from their home countries to the U.S. with the promise of jobs as nannies and housekeepers and then, "once they get to the United States, it turns into quite a nightmare."

Man pleads guilty to smuggling women for prostitution in brothel ring

The ringleaders sneaked hundreds of women into the United States, most of them from Latin American countries, and forced them to have sex with as many as 40 men a day, according to the court documents. They moved the women from brothel to brothel and kept the earnings. "The prostitutes reported they were not free to leave the brothels on their own, and the brothel operators were usually armed with firearms," according to the filing.

Lawsuit accuses Connecticut nursery of human trafficking

A dozen Guatemalan workers filed a federal lawsuit Thursday accusing one of the nation's largest nurseries of engaging in human trafficking by forcing them to work nearly 80 hours per week, paying them less than minimum wage and denying them medical care for injuries on the job.

The workers, who filed the lawsuit against Imperial Nurseries in Granby and its labor recruiter, say they were promised jobs planting trees in North Carolina for $7.50 per hour. Instead, they say they were taken in a van to Connecticut without their consent, had their passports confiscated so they would not escape and were threatened with arrest or deportation.

"These workers came here lawfully to earn a living and support their families," said Nicole Hallett, a Yale Law School student helping the workers. "Instead they were defrauded and trapped into conditions of forced labor."

U.S. intensifies fight against human trafficking

A senior U.S. Justice Department official estimated about 15,000 victims of human trafficking arrive in the United States annually, some as young as 9 years old, destined for jobs in brothels, as unpaid domestic servants, or in other jobs as virtual slaves.

The victims represent a source of continuing income for the rings that provide them, making human trafficking more attractive than drug smuggling to some criminal syndicates, authorities said.

Tall Americano, Hold the Paycheck

A Tacoma teen's coffee shop servitude shows that human trafficking isn't just about sex slaves.

When Abdenasser "Sammy" Ennassime returned home to visit his family in Morocco six years ago, he could brag of a bustling coffee shop, a baby son, and an American wife to show for his more than two decades in the United States. In this light, Ennassime's suggestion to bring his adolescent niece, Lamyaá, to his home in Tacoma to help with the new baby—in return for enrolling her in school and guiding her toward U.S. citizenship—was seen as the magnanimous gesture of a generous uncle.

Woman Pleads Guilty to Forcing Juvenile Girls Into Prostitution In Memphis

At her plea hearing, Perfecto admitted that she told the girls, who were 13 and 17 years of age at the time, that they would be employed at a restaurant in Nashville, knowing all along that the girls would be coerced to engage in prostitution in brothels in Memphis and Nashville. Perfecto further admitted that co-defendant Juan Mendez then used physical force and threats against the victims and their families to force the victims to engage in prostitution.

Legislation targets human trafficking in state

Bradley and O'Dell, of Litchfield, were convicted in 2003 of forcing four Jamaican men to work for their tree-cutting business. The men lived in unsanitary and unsafe conditions, and received no pay for their work, according to Zuckerman. Both Bradley and O'Dell were sentenced to five years, 10 months in prison.

The slaves of New York

Albany needs to wake up and pass a law that will quash human traffickers and protect the most vulnerable. Human slavery - not just crummy pay and lousy work conditions, but outright forced servitude, including the kidnapping, buying and selling of people - is going on in New York City, which is a major hub and destination in a monstrous, global slave trade. The modern resurgence of this ancient horror will continue for exactly as long as cynical politicians and an apathetic public allow it.

"Pimps promise to smuggle the impressionable girls into the United States, telling them they can get jobs as nannies, cooks and maids - making enough money to support their families back home," Bode wrote. "These traffickers charge the girls as much as $7,500 in illicit crossing fees - but once they get to the United States, the girls are raped and forced into prostitution. By the time the girls realize they have been kidnapped, it's too late for them to escape."

Human trafficking is 'alive and well' in U.S.

Human trafficking most commonly is found in the sex trade, but also plagues the lives of farmworkers, domestic servants and hotel and restaurant workers. The $10 billion annual revenue generated through human trafficking, Colletti said, can start like it did for a Chinese girl, "Maria."

Maria is not her name but is a documented example of trafficking. She was sold in China for $2,000 and taken to France. She was then shipped to the United States, where she was sold to her owner for $8,000. Maria logged 12-hour days in a Florida manufacturing company and received $20 per week. She earned $55,000 annually for her owner but had to pay from her own pocket for housing and food.

New Yorkers Draw Attention to Human Trafficking

REPORTER: Human trafficking is a crime, but there's no state law against it - only federal authorities can go after the people who force women to prostitute themselves. But federal prosecutors don't have the resources to go after low profile, smaller-scale traffickers, so Jane Manning of Equality Now says it's outrageous that New York hasn't joined 21 other states and made it a crime.

MANNING: There are traffickers all over NYC getting way with it.

REPORTER: New York is a hub for traffickers but when police encounter prostitutes here, they're not trained to recognize which are victims of trafficking and they have little power to go after the trafficker.

Thais Receive Compensation and Visas in Los Angeles Human Trafficking Case

Ten people were hired to work on the Bay Bridge retrofit by Trans Bay, a manufacturer of hinge pipe beams. Others worked in two Thai restaurants owned by Kim in the Los Angeles area. The restaurant workers were kept in safe houses where they slept on floors and were given scraps of food, Martorell said. Some of them were paid about $200 over three months, despite working seven days a week, 10 hours a day, she said. It wasn't until one of them escaped and went to the Thai community center that an investigation was launched.

Officials decry trafficking of women for sex

Campbell said the women work, sleep and eat in the dingy massage parlors that are run from storefronts near the State House, downtown and on South Main Street.

“They work from the time they get up til the time they go to bed,” he said. “They don’t go home at night.” Campbell said the women, mostly between the ages of 20 and 50, sleep on mattresses and cook from Sterno cans in the back rooms.

Feds raid human trafficking ring

Citing unnamed law enforcement sources, CBS 4 News said the raid disrupted the ring that allegedly has imported hundreds of Korean women into the United States and forced them into prostitution as a means to pay off their debts.

Human trafficking cases increase in El Paso

Human Trafficking Charges Filed

The immigrants were charged between $13,000 and $19,500. Those who failed to repay their smuggling debts were physically threatened, a federal prosecutor, Winston Chan, said yesterday at the arraignment. In one instance, a defendant, Oktavian Kupchanko, said he would have the wife and daughters of one of the immigrants raped because the immigrant was behind on his debts, according to a court papers filed by prosecutors.

Human trafficking focus of workshop

bangordailynews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=142413&zoneid=500

Part of the problem has been that those smuggled into this country, whether on promises of a better life, other false pretenses or coercion, have largely been treated as criminals themselves, he said. The victims have faced prostitution charges and in the case of them being here illegally, face deportation back to their own country where living conditions could be equally bad or worse.

The image of the victim as criminal seems to be changing, largely prompted by a federal law change in 2000 that Gilbert said establishes provisions for treating the victims as refugees. The provisions include the possibility of a special trafficking visa and the prospects of housing and employment assistance and medical and mental health services, if needed.

The idea is to take a new approach to an old problem by bringing in social services and law enforcement on the ground level, identifying indicators of possible trafficking so that the traffickers can be caught and those that they smuggled in can be helped.

Human Trafficking in Minnesota

Minnesota social service groups have assisted up to 500 sex trafficking victims and 55 labor trafficking victims in the past three years, according to results of a study issued last month by the state Department of Public Safety and reported in the Sept. 16 Star Tribune. The study confirms my experience as a prosecutor that human trafficking is a much bigger issue than had been imagined in our state.

Trafficking victims may be desperately poor, dependent on drugs, in a country illegally, or just a kid running away from home. Whatever the vulnerabilities, traffickers create situations in which their victims are nearly powerless -- from beating, raping and starving them, to hooking them on drugs, to taking away their passports or other documents and threatening to deport them.

Federal human trafficking bust implicates downtown establishment

Many of the women who were brought to the United States to work in such establishments came from Korea in the hopes of making money to support their families but were caught in the grasps of debt bondage and sold their bodies to pay off transportation costs, according to the Department of Justice press release. Brothel owners and managers often confiscated the women's identification and travel documents, and some of the women worked under threats of harm to their families back home.

Woman Gets 10 Years For Human Trafficking

A tearful woman was sentenced to just over 10 years in federal prison Friday for her role in a human trafficking operation that enticed women from Korea to come to the U.S. to work as hostesses at a Flushing bar.

Anti-Human Trafficking Law Helps Workers But Many Still Afraid

Advocates say the public is increasingly aware of the plight of young girls kidnapped or tricked into working in brothels. They say, however, that too often the cases of farm workers forced to work off ballooning smuggling debts through fraud or coercion are shrugged off as part of the illegal immigration issue.

Officials name sex slave suspect

www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2006/09/21/news/wyoming/a5bdcb468a2de556872571ef008133cd.txt

Investigators say the girl, who was 13 years old at the time, told a teenage girlfriend, also alleged to have been smuggled and forced to have sex for money with many men here, of her plan to escape to Mexico. Affidavits say the friend informed one or both of their captors, a reportedly 32-year-old Idaho carpenter and a 42-year-old Jackson restaurateur -- both in custody -- of the escape plan. That caused the alleged coyote-ringleaders to threaten to kill a man the 13-year-old victim said she “had met and liked” in Phoenix if she tried to run away, the documents say.

5 Charged In Alleged Human Trafficking Scheme

Authorities said that the victims thought they had signed up for a student-work program, where they could earn as much as $10,000 over the summer. Instead, they allegedly worked 13-hour days, seven days a week. One student earned what amounted to 87 cents an hour.

In addition, investigators said that eight of them shared two, one-bedroom apartments that had a television and a mattress. "The defendants cut the students off from nearly all forms of communication -- no telephone, no Internet," Schlozman said. Investigators said the students were also told their movements were being tracked by a global positioning system device.

Don’t sweep human trafficking under the rug

Media coverage of human trafficking has alternated between the polar extremes of nonexistence and hysteria — a New York Times Magazine story in 2004, for example, referred to an “epidemic” of trafficking and published numbers that, in retrospect, seem grossly inflated.

The irresponsible use of the word “epidemic,” a hallmark of trend journalism, takes the emphasis away from where it should be. The issue isn’t the statistically dubious claim that human trafficking and sexual servitude are swelling uncontrollably in the United States, it’s that the situation exists at all.

Fear-mongering and hysteria are not helpful. What is helpful is the approach taken by the D.A.’s office and Jewish Coalition: Find a way to get these women away from their captors and set aside money for such programs — as new state laws do — while energetically prosecuting human traffickers.

Human trafficking investigated in American Samoa

Court affidavits filed in the government’s case against two Chinese nationals believed to be a the forefront of the prostitution ring indicate that young Chinese women were promised jobs at a store. They instead were forced in to prostitution.

Human trafficking is the new face of slavery in America

In Arkansas, awareness of trafficking abuse is low -- but it's probably happening out there. Immigrants and women are at highest risk. Catholic Charities is collaborating with the FBI and other organizations in the Arkansas Civil Rights Working Group to raise awareness and help spot cases.

Anti-trafficking expert teaches training course

Another emerging problem in the human trafficking world is gangs, he said. California gangs are starting to venture into the lucrative crime by recruiting girls from U.S. elementary and high schools into prostitution with the promise of good money and nice clothes, he said. But conditions soon change and girls are forced to stay, he said. Some girls are trafficked out of state, said Castro, noting that San Diego law enforcers have three or four such open investigations.

5 D.C. Spas Raided In Human-Trafficking Case

www.nbc4.com/news/9690144/detail.html

Authorities have 31 people in custody and more than 70 suspected Korean sex slaves were freed. Investigators said the suspects smuggled Korean women through Canada and Mexico. To help pay off their smuggling fee, the women were forced to work in brothels in seven states -- including Maryland -- and the District.

Seen, but not heard [ACCESS RESTRICTED]

At the recent sentencing hearing of Mi Na Malcolm, the madam's victims — women who worked as prostitutes at Dallas brothels — finally had the chance to tell a federal judge about their horrific experiences since coming to the United States. Yet they did not speak.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldana recalls that the four women, who had worked in this country without proper documentation, told her they were too afraid to talk in the Dallas courtroom — even though they faced no criminal charges themselves, and telling their stories to the judge might bolster their visa applications. Such victims often fear retribution from those who kept them captive, and they don't trust the authorities to help them, Saldana says.

Immigrant sisters admit charges in human trafficking

Two Honduran sisters admitted yesterday that they helped smuggle dozens of illegal female immigrants -- some as young as 14 -- into the United States, then forced them to live together and work at North Jersey bars.

The admissions by Noris Elvira and Ana Luz Rosales-Martinez, during a federal court hearing in Trenton, brought to five the number of guilty pleas in what authorities say was a case of indentured servitude.

Under questioning from prosecutors, the women said they helped oversee dozens of illegal Hondurans who were forced to work six days a week and live in cramped Hudson County apartments until they could repay smuggling fees as high as $20,000.

The immigrants earned $5 an hour, plus tips, by dancing and drinking with male patrons at bars in Union City and Guttenberg. One ring member said the girls were encouraged to prostitute themselves; another said they were beaten if they ignored the house rules.

Woman sentenced to 10 years in human trafficking case

A Korean woman who admitted making illegal immigrant women pay off their smuggling debt through prostitution was sentenced today in Dallas to ten years in prison. Mi Na Malcolm, known as Sora, also was ordered to pay a 460-thousand dollar fine. She must forfeit a B-M-W, a Lexus, more than 218-thousand dollars in cash, and electronic equipment.

3 men sentenced for roles in bar prostitution ring

Two members of a ring that smuggled Central and South American women into the United States and forced them into prostitution were sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison. A third was sentenced to four years.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ruben Perez said the case is evidence of a major shift toward more aggressive investigation and prosecution of human trafficking cases since the formation of the alliance of law enforcement agencies and nongovernmental organizations that work with victims.

Oversight: Human Trafficking In New York City

TRAFFICKING IN NEW YORK CITY - New York City is an ethnically diverse city with a large population of undocumented migrants, some who may have been trafficked. Although statistics are difficult to ascertain, New York City is considered to be a main port of entry and transit area for trafficking because of its airports, rail and bus stations, and ports. In a report on human trafficking in the United States published in 2000 by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport is listed as one of the top five ports of entry for victims of trafficking in the United States.

Human Trafficking

In June 2004, Senzatimore's group initiated an investigation into a suspected trafficking organization operating out of Long Island, New York. They found the largest human trafficking operation ever uncovered in the United States.

Thanks to their work, the trafficking ring has been dismantled, the leader of this effort is behind bars, and more than 80 people, including several children, have been freed from this modern-day slavery.

Defense Department Combats Human Trafficking

www.theconservativevoice.com/article/15561.html

Trafficking in persons is a commercial trade where human beings are subjected to involuntary acts such as prostitution or indentured servitude, which many feel constitutes a modern form of slavery. Force, fraud and coercion are methods used by traffickers to obtain and recruit persons.

McGinn said the Defense Department is focused on two areas: the overseas sex exploitation industry near U.S. areas of operations and the employment practices of civilian contractors supporting DoD operations overseas.

Pipeline to Peril

American tax dollars and the wartime needs of the U.S. military are fueling an illicit pipeline of cheap foreign labor, mainly impoverished Asians who often are deceived, exploited and put in harm's way in Iraq with little protection.

Conference Held on Human Trafficking

Tina Frundt with the Polaris Project says, You get tired of every day and living, you get tired of someone beating you every day, you get tired of sleeping with twenty to thirty men every day, you get tired and you hit rock bottom.

Frundt was only 14 when a man in Cleveland forced her into commercial sex. Today, she calls herself a survivor of human trafficking.

Human Trafficking In North Texas

cbs11tv.com/topstories/local_story_163232228.html

The changes also acknowledged they held women against their will at their $330,000 Coppell house. The couple watched them closely with video surveillance cameras at their house and business and had employees guard the exits. Federal agents arrested the Changs in April of last year after one of the five women being held inside the house managed to escape. Prosecutors say she jumped out of a second floor window.

Coalition to battle human trafficking

Many victims fear coming forward because captors threaten to kill them and their families. Some victims are U.S. citizens - runaways or homeless. Others face language and cultural barriers, she said. During the past 11 months, Rodriguez's coalition has worked with nine victims in Florida from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala - two adults, six girls and a boy, she said.

Legalizing Human Trafficking

For six months, Francisco* was a prisoner of his employers. He was housed in a trailer in rural central Florida with six other men from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras. He would work from dawn until dusk picking oranges, earning an unbelievable $15 a week. He and his fellow workers were watched by armed guards and repeatedly threatened that they would be killed if they tried to run away.

Vigilance Needed in Fight Against Human Trafficking

The maid revealed that despite being promised a part-time job and a work visa, her employer paid far less than minimum wage, did not offer breaks, held her travel documents, isolated her from calling her family, and threatened to call the police and immigration authorities. She spoke little English and had no idea who she could call for help.

Wisconsin Couple Convicted on Human Trafficking Charges

The Justice Department today announced the conviction of a Wisconsin couple, Jefferson and Elnora Calimlim, on human trafficking charges for using threats of serious harm and physical restraint against a Philippine woman to obtain her services as their domestic servant for 19 years.

Human Trafficking: Modern Day Slavery, Part 1

Nineteen trafficking cases were reported to The Greater Milwaukee Area Rescue and Restore Coalition over the past year. Incidents were reported in cities like Milwaukee, Spencer, Waukesha, Brookfield and in Jefferson and Fond Du Lac Counties. Victims are forced to work with no pay or freedoms in restaurants, resorts, factories on farms and in suburban neighborhoods.

A new bid to halt toll of human trafficking

dwb.sacbee.com/content/news/story/14258029p-15072572c.html

Florencia Molina's sewing teacher in Puebla, Mexico, unwittingly wrote Molina and herself one-way tickets into slavery. Good jobs, food and housing awaited them in the United States, the teacher said. Molina had three days to decide. Both women learned after arriving in Los Angeles that the jobs were sewing dresses for 17 hours a day with three 10-minute breaks for beans and rice.

New Process Benefits Victims of Human Trafficking Seeking College Aid

Victims of human trafficking who cooperate with law enforcement officials to prosecute traffickers will benefit from a new, streamlined process to apply for and receive federal financial aid for postsecondary education, announced today by U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.

Three charged in alleged human trafficking scheme

talk.assmotax.org/viewtopic.php?topic=9319&forum=10&7

Marion County prosecutor Carl Brizzi is charging three men with holding about 20 undocumented immigrants in a one bedroom Indianapolis apartment. Brizzi says the three … threatened to kill the immigrants if they tried to leave.

Human Trafficking Is Modern Day Slavery, Prostitution Is Involved

But trafficking also occurs in forms of labor exploitation, such as domestic servitude or restaurant work, sweatshop, factory work or migrant agricultural work.

Victims serve in wealthy residents' homes, migrants trapped in the fields trying to pay off a debt they never will be able to pay to captors who helped smuggle them into the country. Children are smuggled into the country and sex slavery.

Millionaire NY Couple Charged With Human Trafficking

www.change.org/news/view?news_id=826

Two Nassau County residents are charged with using physical abuse, threats of physical abuse and physical restraint against two Indonesian females working as domestic servants at their residence.

Mission woman found guilty of human trafficking

www.ginsc.net/members/news_details_en.php?id=1122&sub=traffiking&stat=active

Prosecutors say Ellilian Ramos paid a smuggler $250 to bring the two women across the Rio Grande in November 2004. The women, cousins Maria de Jesus Batres and Floridalma Sales Flores, were forced to work at Ramos' home without pay, authorities said.

Batres and Sales say the couple promised to pay them $125 a week after smuggling costs were worked off. Instead, Ellilian Ramos didn't pay them and threatened to call immigration authorities if they tried to leave.

The women said they also worked for the Ramos' family members and at Papacito's Day Care, which is owned by Ellilian Ramos' sister. Both women escaped through a window on Jan. 11, 2005, with help from two women they met at the business.

Man Sentenced For Human Trafficking

Maka smuggled seven men from Tonga and forced them to work for his landscaping and construction business for less than a hundred dollars a week. Often they received no pay at all.

Maka beat them with his fists, pieces of lumber or a two-foot-long metal spike.

Victims say they had to resort to killing stray dogs for food.

New push to combat human trafficking

Victims of human trafficking blend in with the community as they toil as nannies, servants, laborers and sweatshop and construction workers, said a top Illinois official at the Saturday launch of an outreach campaign aimed at fighting the problem.

The campaign is intended to alert people to look for signs of abuse that indicate workers have been forced into servitude, said Carol Adams, director of the state Department of Human Services.

Key Witness missing in CO slavery case against Homaidan Al-Turki and Sarah Khonaizan

An Indonesian woman who was kept as a virtual slave and who was also a key witness against a Saudi Arabian couple, Homaidan Al-Turki and his wife, Sarah Khonaizan. A modern day slavery case where the victim was forced cook clean and was sexually abused.

Three Mexican Nationals Convicted of Sex Trafficking

houston.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel06/ho20606a.htm

At this re-arraignment hearing on Friday, February 3, Jose Luis Moreno Salazar admitted that in 2004 he, along with another, illegally smuggled a then 15 year old juvenile Mexican girl, M.R.G., into the United States, knowing she was a minor and compelled her to serve as a prostitute through the use of force, fraud and coercion for the financial benefit of the conspirators. Jose Luis Moreno Salazar lured M.R.G. from her family by professing love and claiming she would live with him as his common law wife. The evidence proved that once in Houston, Jose Luis Moreno Salazar housed M.R.G. and other women and girls in apartments leased by members of the organization and transported them to area bars for the purpose of prostitution. Jose Luis and his co-conspirators provided instruction to the women and girls regarding how to service clients and required them to turn over their prostitution proceeds at the end of each day for the benefit of the conspirators. Jose Luis and others threatened the women and girls to create a climate of fear to compel and maintain their service as prostitutes. Jose Luis subjected M.R.G. to beatings for perceived infractions. The beatings were committed with a belt, a wire hanger, or a cable. For disobedience, M.R.G. was also threatened with a knife and beaten by other co-conspirators at the behest of Jose Luis. M.R.G. was 17 years old when she was rescued by investigating agents in September 2005.

Sex rings prey on immigrant women

SUPPLY AND DEMAND - Human trafficking often begins with someone paying to be smuggled across the border. The situation changes when smugglers increase their prices or add fees the person is unable to pay. Smugglers then force them into work to pay off the debt. For women, the work is often prostitution.

In all, between 20,000 and 50,000 victims are trafficked yearly into the United States, including thousands in North Carolina. They are also forced to work in factories, migrant farms, construction and domestic work. Most victims in Charlotte come from Central and South America, but some others come from Asia and Eastern Europe.

Emancipation 2006 - Saving innocents from modern-day slavery (a work in progress)

According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, investigations into trafficking "increased by more than 400 percent in the first six months of fiscal year 2005, compared to the total number of cases in fiscal year 2004." Although keeping true numbers on these elusive crimes is next to impossible, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, between 14,500 and 17,500 people are being traded within the United States.

Mexican national pleads guilty to bringing sex slaves to Houston-area bars

Salvador Fernando Molina Garcia, 37, an illegal immigrant, has pleaded guilty to smuggling girls and young women from Mexico into Houston and forcing them to work as prostitutes in local bars, according to federal officials.

The single count superseding indictment re-alleges that Gerardo Salazar, 40, is the leader of a group of men who smuggled minor girls and young women from Mexico into the United States. Using deception, threats of harm, physical force and psychological coercion, Salazar compelled their service for prostitution in Houston area bars.

Slavery Slips Through Cracks in U.S. Policy

Bernstein, whose group handles a constant flow of slavery cases, listed some typical scenarios:

An offer to earn good wages and study lures a teenage girl abroad, where she is forced to work eighteen hours a day as a housekeeper

Aided by a smuggler, a young man’s passage across the US-Mexico border ends with a crushing debt, to be repaid through captive manual labor.

More Slave-Holding Immigrants in the West

Abdelnasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim, 45, and his former wife Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib, 43: The Egyptian immigrants, living in Irvine, California, pleaded guilty today to four felonies in a child slave case. They admitted bringing a 10-year-old Egyptian girl in 2000 to the United States and making her work as a servant for up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, to their family of seven during August 2000-April 2002.

Salvadoran Nationals in the U.S. Arrested for Sex Trafficking Scheme

According to the complaint, one young woman earned about $500 to $600 a week selling drinks to male customers. But after paying debts that included alien smuggling fees, food, housing, clothing and other miscellaneous items, she received approximately $50 each week. In addition to the almost insurmountable debt, the complaint alleges that the defendants used threats of violence against the women and their families to control them and keep them working. The complaint alleges that the defendants compelled the woman and girls to submit to the sexual demands of the defendants, their close associates and bar patrons.

U.S. crackdown on child prostitution hits Michigan

Two Toledo girls -- one 14 years old, the other 15 -- were held against their will and forced to perform sex for pay at hotels in Ohio and a truck stop in Michigan, according to a federal grand jury indictment unsealed Friday in Detroit.

Los Angeles Woman Pleads Guilty To Human Trafficking Charge For Bringing Niece To U.S. To Work As Prostitute

According to a plea agreement filed today, in January 2003, Okhotina paid for a ticket for her 18-year-old niece to fly from Russia to Los Angeles. When the teenager arrived in Los Angeles, she lived with Okhotina at her apartment. Soon after, Okhotina took possession of her niece’s passport and told her that she would have to work as a prostitute.

Okhotina coerced her niece to work as a prostitute by telling her that she would be arrested if she went to the police because she was here in the United States illegally. Okhotina also told the niece that if she left the apartment, or if Okhotina made her leave the apartment, she would have no place to stay and would be on the street.

As a result of this coercion, the teenager engaged in prostitution in California and Las Vegas, Nevada. Okhotina took the money that her niece received for prostituting herself.

Sex slavery is big business

Earlier this week, eight people were charged with smuggling 100 girls from Central America into Houston and forcing them into prostitution. The victims are brought here from Southeast Asia, Latin America, the former Soviet Union and the continent of Africa.

Police target human trafficking

In Indiana, at least 2 inquiries are under way into rings that push people into prostitution, slavery. Marlene Harpi arrived in Indianapolis from New York in June 2001, believing she would be starting a $500-a-week baby-sitting job. The Honduran woman, then 34, was told instead she would be working as a prostitute in a duplex in the 3000 block of West 16th Street. Her captors warned her that she would "disappear" if she tried to flee.

Enslaved in America: Sex Trafficking in the United States

I was 14 years old when I was forced into prostitution. Like many teens at that age, finding my own identity and defying my parents were top on my list. So when a man came into my life and showered me with attention and listened to me when I complained about my parents, I did not think twice that he was ten years my senior. After all, he said I was mature for my age and told me I understood him better than anyone his own age.

Human Trafficking Seen as Threat Within Nation's Borders

"This summer we arrested a ring where 100 girls from Korea were being held in forced prostitution in San Francisco," Kibble said at the conference. "Over 1,500 trafficking victims in Los Angeles and 400 in Orange County have been rescued in the past two years. It is evil what these people are doing, and we in law enforcement can't do it all. We need your help. We're all in this together."

Runaway raped, held as sex slave

Suspect in runaway prostitute case was child prostitute

Butler was similarly imprisoned by a pimp in 2003, when police said she was among eight girls kept in a locked apartment. Butler refused to testify against Christopher Arbuckle, 26, who was convicted of holding the girls and is serving time in an Arizona prison.

Couple guilty of fraud, forced labor

The married owners of a group home for the mentally ill were convicted Monday of enslaving its residents, forcing them to work naked and perform videotaped sex acts.

Woman Tells Terrifying Story Of Teen Prostitution

Her nightmare started in a San Jose parking lot. A woman, who 10News will call Sarah, was 18 and walking in broad daylight when several men got out of their car and cornered her. "The driver said, 'I have a gun, get in the car.' I got in the car," she said.

Sex trafficking hits home

www.mndaily.com/articles/2005/10/31/65875

You couldn't spot them on the street, but right now there are slaves living in local neighborhoods, hidden in basements and being transported along area highways. The CIA estimates 50,000 women and children are transported each year throughout the United States by being conned and forced into a life of sexual exploitation. The FBI estimates that the average age of a prostitute in the United States is 13.

To stop a forced sex trade

www.mndaily.com/articles/2005/10/31/65899

She said she was trafficked by her family as a young girl and escaped by saving money for college. Stark attended the University her first year and transferred to University of Wisconsin-Madison to get away from her family.

Rural Minnesota is one of the sex trafficking pipelines to larger cities, such as Chicago, she said.

Slavery is no longer black, white

Due to recent increases in the number of trafficking in persons cases and the release of the 5th annual Trafficking in Persons Report, President George W. Bush has required the Department of Defense to increase its training and awareness of this crime in order to assist in its prevention. The Marine Corps has decided to take on this challenge in a very direct manner. “The Marine Corps will take a zero tolerance approach to trafficking in persons…and the Marine Corps opposes all activities that contribute to this crime,” said Gen. Michael W. Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps, in All Marine Message 016/05. In light of the Corps zero tolerance stance no Marine, Sailor or civilian Marine will ever participate in any crime associated with trafficking in persons, no matter how small the association. Doing so will result in severe punishment.

Sexual Slavery in Prison

A former inmate has told jurors how corrections officers ignored his written pleas for help, and even laughed at him, while he was repeatedly raped and sold into sexual slavery by prisoners who viewed him as property. According to court documents, vulnerable inmates were told to either fight it out with rapists or find boyfriends who would protect them in return for sex. Mr. Johnson says gang members were free to rape him, sometimes by paying a few dollars to the prisoner who in effect "owned" him.

Behind the moral panic, an opportunity to work

When hundreds of federal and state agents descended on massage parlors in San Francisco earlier this month, declaring some women sex slaves, another story was obscured by this moral panic: This rescue operation was not necessarily in the best interests of these women.

Oversexed

On paper the law looks good. But in practice it hasn't helped many people so far, and it's hurt others, while placing undue emphasis on commercial sex work and downplaying the plight of victims in other jobs, like Alice. Probably because she was "just" an imprisoned nanny and not a brothel captive, the Feds declined to criminally prosecute her boss, and they hardly publicized her case. That's often what happens with people forced to work in factories, fields, restaurants and homes -- and there are plenty of them in the United States.

Service providers stress that coerced sex brutalizes victims, and they're glad the government and the media are concerned. But they wonder why other workers' suffering gets so much less attention. The terror evoked by imprisonment in a sweatshop, says CAST's Buck, "is just as severe as it is for a person who's sex trafficked."

The Real Deal

As the hound of human traffickers, John Miller believes playing politics is not an option. Recently, Goldberg elaborated: "I've only interviewed about 20 million people in my time. He was furious that he'd been lied to about this. He just came through as the real deal."

U.S. kids coerced into prostitution

ALMOST A BRAINWASHING - "He kept all the money. He made them believe he was keeping the money for them. The girls were not free to leave. He kept them in horrible hotels. And moved them around. He paid for food and clothing," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Carrie Hamilton. "It's almost a brainwashing that takes place. It's a very complicated, horrible relationship."

Surviving Chicago's sex slave trade

A GUN TO THE HEAD - Mishulovich and the others had no intention of ever letting the debt get paid down, authorities said. On a good night, Z would earn $500. And just about all of it went to the crew, who also checked her belongings at the end of the night, looking for hidden cash.

Captive Workforce (American Samoa) [PDF]

[page 7] Around nine o’clock, the guards would shut the gates of the factory compound, preventing employees from escaping. But the fences were only an extra precaution; starvation, threats and beatings had sapped many of even the hope of ever leaving.

Modern Slavery

A HIDDEN PROBLEM - Regarding this phenomenon, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) declared that in 2004 it detected sixteen thousand undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans subjected to sex and labor slavery in the United States.

U.S. Agents Raid Fla. Migrant Labor Camp

Officials said homeless people were recruited to the Evans Labor Camp through offers of room and board, along with alcohol, tobacco and drugs, which they bought on credit. But they never made enough in the field to pay it off, according to an investigative summary. "A lot of times, they get them indebted even before they get back to the camp,"

Human trafficking goes on in U.S., too

On Jan. 1, 2002, she worked her first shift at the dressmaker’s; sewing roughly 200 party dresses over 12 hours. Later, the shifts often stretched to 17 hours a day. Molina was locked into the shop at night - sleeping with a co-worker in a small storage room. The shop manager paid Molina roughly $100 a week, confiscated her identity documents, and told her she would be arrested if she went to the authorities. "For me, it was completely dark, without money, without English, no papers, nothing," Molina said in an interview.

10 Charged in International Human Smuggling Ring

www.ice.gov/pi/news/newsreleases/articles/050721newark.htm

The women, mostly from rural, poor villages in Honduras – some as young as 14 – were recruited under the false promise of getting legitimate jobs as waitresses in restaurants in New Jersey. Once brought to Hudson County by way of a safe house in Houston, Texas, however, they were put to work at several bars owned by the ringleader and subject to physical and emotional abuse, according to the Indictment.

Saudis Import Slaves to America

It's shocking, especially for a graduate student and owner of a religious bookstore - but not particularly rare. Here are other examples of enslavement, all involving Saudi royals or diplomats living in America.

Sex Slaves Revisited

To be sure, sex slavery in the United States is real and horrific, but the body count remains anybody's guess, and that includes the U.S. government.

A Modern Slave Trade

Consider recent trafficking cases right here in America. In April, three Mexican defendants pled guilty to 27 counts of running a sex-trafficking ring between Mexican villages and New York City. Between 1991 and 2004, the Carreto family smuggled dozens of young, poor women into the U.S., promising them jobs and better lives, selling them the American dream. Instead, they sold them into sexual slavery and only the Carreto family profited.

Earlier this spring, a New Jersey man was sentenced to prison for luring Russian women into the U.S. as "cultural dancers." The women ended up being forced to work in New Jersey strip clubs. Noncompliance meant a severe beating or worse.

American women and girls are victims of sex trafficking too. In February of this year, a father-son team in Kansas pled guilty to trafficking girls ages 13 to 16 into prostitution by luring them with false promises of out-of-town day trips.

NY State Wants to Make Human Trafficking a Felony

Last March, a Filipino-American Wisconsin couple — both physicians — was indicted for human trafficking for holding a Filipina as a domestic servant in their home for 19 years by threatening her with deportation, imprisonment and physical restraint. Last fall, a 60-year-old Filipino woman in California won an $825,000 lawsuit after claiming she was enslaved and assaulted, working 18 hours a day, and sleeping in a dog bed.

The new face of slave trade in Houston?

He says the girls working at most Asian and Oriental spas were smuggled here against their will. "They don't let 'em out the doors. They don't get breaks. They can't leave and go shopping," says David.

Three Arrested in Connection with Prostitution Case

Two Toledo teens are back home safe after police say they were abducted while walking in East Toledo and forced into prostitution. "We'll be right back." That's what the two teenage cousins told their parents. When they didn't return from a walk, their parents thought they had run away. It wasn't until Monday, they learned what had happened.

Human trafficking initiative advances in eastern Missouri

"The minute you start talking about it, individuals in the community will say, 'I may know somebody who may be a victim," said Suzanne LeLaurin, vice president of the International Institute, a refugee resettlement agency. "The victims are so controlled by traffickers, it's difficult to find them until you start doing assertive outreach and investigation. "As soon as you start doing that, you find them."

Bills Target International Slave Trade

Slave trafficking is not a new problem on the world stage, but now states are responding to calls to fight it at home - even in Alaska.

Study Alleges Slavery In State

www.sacbee.com/content/politics/ca/v-print/story/12462334p-13318412c.html

The greatest number of victims were forced to work in prostitution, according to the report. Others labored in garment sweatshops or as house cleaners. The bulk of the abuses occurred in and around Los Angeles and San Francisco, with a handful in San Jose. Of the 554 victims, 136 were immigrants from Thailand and 104 from Mexico. People from China, Cambodia, India, Russia, Vietnam, the Philippines and eight other nations also were involved. A few victims were U.S. citizens.

Forced-Labor Charges For Saudi Prince's Wife

The wife of a Saudi prince was arrested yesterday for allegedly forcing two Indonesian housekeepers to work for her family at homes in Arlington and Winchester for meager wages over nearly two years.

Russian woman pleads innocent to forcing niece into prostitution

Her niece, who was 18 at the time and had come from a small town near St. Petersburg, told investigators Okhotina hid her passport, destroyed her plane ticket home and subjected her to regular beatings, threats and rape by strangers, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

Florida Man Accused of Buying Children for use in Pornography

A Florida man is set to stand trial under a new federal law to fight human trafficking – the first person to be tried under the law. Kent Frank, 48, is accused of trying to buy children in Cambodia to be used in pornography.

Slavery In The Modern World

The indictment alleges that Ibrahim and Motelib obtained the victim's services through extortionate threats against the victim's sister in Egypt. The couple then arranged through a third party to fraudulently obtain a visa for the victim so she could travel to the United States. Ibrahim and Motelib then harbored the victim "in squalid conditions and conceal[ed] her presence from immigration, school, and police officials so that she could serve their family as a domestic servant," the indictment reads.

Opening our Eyes to the World's Trafficking Nightmare

“Neighbors, I’m sure, thought I was family and had no idea I’d been sold for $2,500 to be a servant,” described Micheline, a trafficking survivor, to a crowd at the International Institute of Boston. Micheline, who lost her parents as a young child, was 14 when her extended family told her she was moving to the United States. Eager and hopeful, her world crumbled when she found herself molested, abused, and forced to look after three young children day and night.”

Couple Indicted On Human Trafficking Charges

According to the three count indictment, Joseph Djoumessi and Evelyn Djoumessi violated federal law by fraudulently bringing a 14 year old Cameroonian girl into the United States and using her as an unpaid domestic servant in their Farmington Hills, Michigan home for almost four years. The Djoumessis are Cameroonian nationals and permanent resident aliens of the United States.

"Too often human traffickers bait young girls with promises of the American dream only to then force them into involuntary servitude. Civilized society cannot tolerate this," said R. Alexander Acosta, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. "The Justice Department takes these charges very seriously and is committed to prosecuting those who attempt to profit by the systematic abuse and degradation of others."

Woman pleads guilty to holding a domestic worker in involuntary servitude

In 1997, the defendant, Mariska Trisanti, arranged for the victim to travel from Indonesia to Los Angeles on a tourist visa, with the expectation that the victim would work for her for two years as a nanny and housekeeper. When the victim arrived in the United States however, Trisanti confiscated her passport to prevent her from running away and put her to work for 17 hours or more per day, seven days a week. The victim received virtually no compensation for her labor. Although Trisanti initially made some payments to the victim's relatives, even those payments stopped entirely after the first year of service.

Farm Contractors Plead Guilty In Slavery Case

The town of Albion grabbed national headlines in June 2002 when six migrant farm workers narrowly escaped the camps where they were being held in virtual slavery. Now, in federal plea agreements, a family of farm labor contractors have pleaded guilty to charges of forced labor and harboring illegal aliens.

Prostitution horror for young women

Before the night is over, the girls of "Zona Rosa" - a notorious red-light district just a few blocks from the main tourist drag in this Mexican border town - will make as much as $250 each by selling sex. It's cold-blooded sexual slavery - forced prostitution that began when they were kidnapped from their small towns in Mexico and Central America and smuggled through a dangerous corridor that leads into the United States. After they work their apprenticeships in Tijuana, many of the girls end up as sexual servants in New York's illegal brothels.

Livonia Man Pleads Guilty to Crimes Relating to Involuntary Servitude

detroit.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel06/de03080906.htm

Maksimenko admitted today that he and his business partners, including Aronov, trafficked in Eastern European women and used the guise of a legitimate business – Beauty Search, Inc. – to cover their criminal conduct. Maksimenko admitted that he and his partners smuggled women into the United States and compelled them through threats and coercion to work as dancers in strip clubs. To maintain compliance, Maksimenko and his partners took a number of steps, including confiscating the dancers' passports; imposing large debts on them; enforcing rules designed to isolate the dancers from potential rescuers through interrogations, monetary penalties, physical violence and threats; searching the dancers' apartments; and threatening to turn the dancers in to authorities because of their illegal immigrant status. According to Aronov's plea agreement, Maksimenko forced the dancers to engage in nonconsensual sexual relations with him, by intimidating and threatening them with arrest and deportation and by reminding them that they owed him a debt for employing them.

Region's human traffic is targeted - Task force to prosecute sex-trade, slavery cases

Many of the girls and young women had been promised work as maids and were smuggled into San Diego from Mexico and Central America. However, authorities said they weren't able to build a strong-enough case in the rush to rescue minors, and the charges were dropped.

Three Mexicans Plead Guilty in New York Human-Trafficking Case

They admitted to forcing young Mexican women into prostitution in brothels throughout the New York City area. The defendants recruited young, poor women in Mexico, offered them better opportunities in the United States, smuggled them to New York and forced them into prostitution.

Homegrown Sex Trafficking [PDF]

[page 6] Escape is often impossible. Fear maintains their victim status. Minors live in fear of sadistic acts by "customers," fear of being beaten and abused if they fail to bring in their quota (ranging from $500 to $1,800 a day/night), fear of losing their coping mechanisms (drugs and alcohol), and fear of losing a place to live and food to eat. These children are also ashamed and fear their families will find out what they have been doing. They fear the police and fear being returned home.

U.S. Cooperates with Europe to Combat Sex Trafficking - Fact Sheet

DOJ estimated in June 2004 that 14,500-17,500 people were being trafficked into the United States annually: 3,500-5,500 from Europe and Eurasia …3,500-5,500 from Latin America … 5,000-7,000 from East Asia and the Pacific … 200-700 from Africa …200- 600 from South Asia … 0- 200 from the Near East

Freedom House Country Report - Political Rights: 1 Civil Liberties: 1 Status: Free

Human Rights Overview by Human Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwid

Ending the quiet tragedy of modern-day slavery

In the past 12 months, immigration agents have raided a number of suspected brothels in quiet San Francisco neighborhoods, exposing a previously unseen tragedy.

Despite shock at how it could happen here, prostitution of youth is sadly all too common in our community and, in fact, often involves children as young as 9 years old. Child prostitution is a devastating problem that few people want to talk about. The fact remains that rarely do child prostitutes begin selling their bodies on their own. Many are coerced into the lifestyle and forced into virtual slavery by traffickers and pimps. According to the advocacy organization Standing Against Global Exploitation, 85 percent of child prostitutes previously suffered incest, rape or abuse at home, and are often singled out by pimps because they are runaways. - htsccp

HHS asks doctors to watch for human trafficking

Over the years, David McCollum, MD, has seen patients who seemed to be in an abusive situation but didn't quite fit the profile for victims of domestic violence. But there were common themes. Someone was always with these patients, never letting them speak for themselves, and even if they did, their English was limited or nonexistent. They also always seemed insecure and uncomfortable.

Dr. McCollum, an emergency physician from Chanhassen, Minn., and chair of the AMA National Advisory Council on Violence and Abuse, now thinks these patients may have been victims of human trafficking -- a modern form of slavery in which people are moved across borders and subjected to sexual exploitation, forced labor or indentured servitude. "A lot of people are being trafficked, but it's underreported," he said.

Thanks to the Dept. of Health and Human Services, resources are now becoming available to help physicians identify the problem. HHS is rolling out its "Rescue and Restore Victims of Human Trafficking" awareness campaign to provide physicians and other health care professionals tools to detect victims of this crime.

Sex slaves hidden victims in trade

Unlike the open slavery practised in the past, the victims of modern bondage live in a shadowy world where threats of violence guarantee their silence and protect their oppressors from legal retribution. "If you get caught with guns and drugs you'll get a long prison term," says Rick Castro, a deputy sheriff with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department and a veteran of the war against modern slavers. "But if you're a trafficker you've already told your victims that if they talk to the cops they'll be killed or raped. Or their family members back home will be killed. So there's less chance of being caught."

'Modern-Day Slavery' Prompts Rescue Efforts

Halla forbade Muka from bathing because "she did not want my germs in the shower," Muka wrote. Halla often slapped her and kicked her while wearing boots and shoes. Once, Halla noticed a scratch on the baby's nose. "She pulled a knife out of the drawer and demonstrated pulling the knife across her throat as if to slice it," Muka wrote. "While she was doing this, she looked at me and said that if a scratch occurred again, she would kill me." Halla confiscated her passport and told her "bad people" would hurt her if she ever left, according to Muka's statement. Muka said she imagined government officials tracking her down.

Department of Homeland Security immigration officials were able to track the diplomat, but he had returned to the United Arab Emirates.

Gov't Effort to Stem Human Trafficking Helps Very Few

Waipahu man guilty of slavery

Lueleni Fetongi Maka was accused of luring Tongans here and forcing them to work. Maka was accused of luring seven Tongan men to Hawaii with promises of a better life and then forcing them to work for his landscaping businesses, housing them in squalid conditions, and controlling them with beatings and threats of deportation.

Sex trafficking strikes closer to home than thought

A bed, a teddy bear, and a roll of paper towels are the only contents of a closet-sized room where a trafficked 13-year-old girl was sold for sex by pimps to 20-30 men a day.

On Nov. 5, 2003, a woman taken from the Lloyd Center shopping mall was found to have been drugged awake for three straight days of sexual slavery by traffickers in Vancouver, Canada.

Traffickers forced three dozen Mexican men and boys recruited in Arizona to work 60 hours a week on farms near Buffalo, N.Y. for $30 a week.

So where are these women, men and children who have been forced to endure slave-like conditions and where can we find them in Portland? Despite 33 percent of the opening anecdotes being about men and boys trafficked for labor, only 20 percent of trafficking is of males and less than half of all trafficking is for labor. Considering 75 percent of female victims are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation, a boom industry in Portland, it was rightly stated by speaker Mohamed Y. Mattar that, “too many people in this country do not understand the link between prostitution and crime, between prostitution and AIDS, between prostitution and trafficking.”

Department of Justice announces human trafficking task force in the District of Columbia and grants for law enforcement to fight human trafficking and assist victims

Assistant Attorney General R. Alexander Acosta of the Civil Rights Division, Assistant Attorney General Christopher A. Wray of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Wainstein of the District of Columbia announced today that the Department of Justice is awarding more than $7.6 million in grants-of which $450,000 will go to the District of Columbia-to enable state and local law enforcement to fight human trafficking by creating task forces to aid in the identification and rescue of human trafficking victims.

'Modern-Day Slavery' Prompts Rescue Efforts

Among the experiences of the principal victim were: working from 6 AM until Midnight every single day; cutting the grass of a huge yard (and shoveling the huge driveway in Winter alone, by hand) while simultaneously caring for three children, washing, cleaning and cooking for a family of five; putting up with the all-day screams and verbal insults of the wife in the diplomatic family; not being permitted to ever leave the house alone; not being permitted to go anywhere on her weekend time off unless she was accompanied. Upon arranging for the escape of this woman, our family gave her a place to stay and work until she was able to establish her independence.

The (ongoing) San Diego, California Child Mass Sexual Slavery Scandal

The articles here below describe one of the largest known child and youth sex trafficking cases in the United States to date. In one of several related cases, hundreds of Mexican girls between 7 and 18 were kidnapped or subjected to false romantic entrapment by organized criminal sex trafficking gangs. Victims were then brought to San Diego County, California. Over a 10 year period these girls were raped by hundreds of men per day in more than 2 dozen home based and agricultural camp based brothels.

Slavery Continues in the Form of Forced Prostitution

www.crosswalk.com/1257639/

"I'm reading about how they lured these girls from Asian nations, promised them restaurant jobs, modeling jobs, ... seized their passports, beat them, raped them, moved them from brothel to brothel," he said. This was not happening in some distant Third World nation, however. "There it was in civil Seattle," Miller said.

Washington state a hotbed for human trafficking, report says

A new report says Washington state is a hotbed for what many say is a modern form of slavery: human trafficking, the recruitment, transportation and sale of people for labor. The state's international border with Canada, its many ports, rural areas and dependency on agricultural workers make Washington prone to such exploitation, according to the report

Based on extensive interviews with local social-service providers, the report notes trafficking has occurred in 18 Washington state counties, with victims ranging from "mail-order" brides to sex workers to domestic workers and children. The local victims have been brought from Russia, the Philippines, China and Mexico. But what has been difficult, according to the task force, is coming up with an actual number of trafficking victims. "It's just like domestic violence and sexual assault 20 years ago," said Emery. "We didn't know those numbers either. We just knew it was there."

S.F. parlor hit in crackdown on sex slave trade

Earlier this month -- two weeks after the U.S. Justice Department and local police announced a new crime-fighting task force -- agents raided a massage parlor in an alley off Mission Street, just a short hop from some of San Francisco's biggest hotels. Inside, authorities rounded up 17 young Asian women believed to have been trafficked into the country for sex and slave labor. Many were found in a basement, reachable only through a false wall inside a cabinet.

The two later told investigators they had been smuggled from Canada into the United States in May and taken directly to King's, where one of the managers allegedly paid $32,000 to the person who had transported them.

The two women said they briefly escaped in August, but were soon found by the manager and two other workers, returned to King's and beaten.

New York Couple Pleads Guilty to Alien Smuggling Charges

A couple in eastern New York state has pleaded guilty to a variety of charges related to smuggling Peruvians into the United States and subjecting them to forced labor. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the pleas November 5 in a press release.

Mariluz Zavala and Jorge Ibanez were arrested last June when authorities raided the couple's homes and discovered 69 illegal aliens from Peru and a large quantity of fraudulent identification documents.

The press release says that the couple devised a scheme starting in 1999 to obtain phony visas to get Peruvians into the United States illegally. They charged the would-be immigrants a hefty sum for the trip. Then the couple threatened to turn their victims over to authorities, keeping them in forced labor situations and confiscating their wages.

Ending Modern Day Slavery: U.S. Efforts To Combat Trafficking in Persons

But the trafficking issue is not just an issue for foreign governments. The United States is not a source nation for trafficking victims, who tend to come from places with large numbers of young people looking to move elsewhere for opportunity. It is, however, a transit point and destination for trafficking victims. This is true in many places across the country, including the Bay Area, where women have been enslaved and forced to play a role in illegal commercial sexual exploitation.

Domestically, we are fighting this scourge through a number of different means. With the active involvement of Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Department of Justice has significantly increased federal trafficking prosecutions. There have been 83 convictions or guilty pleas since an aggressive anti-trafficking initiative was launched March 2001. In January 2004, there were 344 open investigations of trafficking. Thanks again to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, those found guilty of trafficking crimes face significantly increased jail time -- up to 20 years in prison from the previous maximum of 10 years for many infractions, and up to life imprisonment under certain circumstances.

Probe into Iraq trafficking claims

Indian press reports said that Indian nationals in Jordan and Kuwait were recruited for jobs in U.S. military camps in Iraq as cooks, butchers, laundry workers and handymen.

Some of the Indians charge they signed up through Indian employment companies to work in Kuwait, but ended up in Iraq working for low pay and were refused permission to leave the country.

Testimony of Professor Mohamed Mattar, Co-Director, Protection Project, Johns Hopkins University, July 7, 2004

judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=1255&wit_id=3643

Based upon the analysis conducted by The Protection Project on these cases, which the Department of Justice kindly made available, I can say that the majority of victims that are trafficked into the U.S. come from countries in Africa, especially Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana and Tonga; Latin America, especially Jamaica, Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala; Asia, especially South Korea, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Thailand and China and Russia.

They are trafficked to different states, in particular, California, Florida, New York, Hawaii, Georgia, Alaska, Texas and North Carolina. They are trafficked for the purposes of prostitution, other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor and domestic service.

A Crackdown On the Traffic In Humans [PDF]

[page 25] "Each year, tens of thousands of people -- predominantly women and children – are trafficked into the United States," Mr. Ashcroft said. "Even one is one too many. These innocent victims are kidnapped or lured with false promises of good jobs and better lives. They are then abused and cruelly exploited."

The attorney general cited recent cases that he said reflected the personal tragedies of foreign-born women and children. A 14-year-old girl from Cameroon was lured to Maryland by a couple who promised an American education; instead she served three years as a domestic servant and was sexually abused. In California, a well-known landlord pleaded guilty to trafficking in girls from India, who were put into sexual servitude.

Four indicted in Alaska for luring Russian girls and women to U.S. and enslaving them in a strip club

Four people were charged today in Alaska with conspiring to enslave Russian women and girls in a strip club in Anchorage, the Justice Department announced. This is the first case prosecuted under the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, enacted by Congress in October 2000 to stop the practice of trafficking in humans.

Victor Virchenko, Pavel Agafonov, Tony Kennard and Rachel Kennard were charged under a 23-count indictment with conspiring to lure six Russian women and girls to Alaska to enslave them. Virchenko is a Russian national, Agafonov is a naturalized U.S. citizen, and Tony and Rachel Kennard are U.S. citizens. The four defendants were previously indicted for falsely representing to immigration authorities that the Russian women would be in the United States for a cultural exchange.

Today's superceding indictment charges that the defendants recruited the females under false pretenses - to perform Russian folk dances in a cultural festival - only to force them into servitude once they arrived in the United States. The charges against the defendants include six counts of forced labor [18 U.S.C. §1589], for coercing the victims to perform in a strip club by employing a scheme that relied on threats, isolation, and confiscation of the victims' passports, visas, and plane tickets.

NCC Endorses Consumer Boycotts of Taco Bell, Mt. Olive Pickle Products

IN RECENT WEEKS, THE COALITION OF IMMOKALEE WORKERS HAS BEEN RECOGNIZED BY - The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, which has selected Julia Gabriel, Lucas Benitez and Romeo Ramirez, three leaders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, to receive the prestigious 2003 RFK Human Rights Award for their work against slavery in the fields and for the Taco Bell Boycott. Through their work, they have helped liberate more than 1,000 workers held against their will by employers using violence – beatings, pistol-whippings, shootings – and the threat of violence, according to the center. Ms. Gabriel herself is a former captive worker who escaped from a 400-worker slavery ring that operated in the fields of South Carolina and Florida. With the assistance of the CIW, Ms. Gabriel successfully helped prosecute and put her employer behind bars.

CIW Anti-Slavery Campaign

The CIW's Anti-Slavery Campaign is a worker-based approach to eliminating modern-day slavery in the agricultural industry.

In the most recent case to be brought to court, a federal grand jury indicted six people in Immokalee on January 17th, 2008, for their part in what US Attorney Doug Molloy called "slavery, plain and simple" (Ft. Myers News-Press, “Group accused of keeping, beating, stealing from Immokalee laborers,” 1/18/08). The employers were charged with beating workers who were unwilling to work or who attempted to leave their employ picking tomatoes, holding their workers in debt, and chaining and locking workers inside u-haul trucks as punishment ("How about a side order of human rights," Miami Herald, 12/16/07)

Six Indicted in Conspiracy for Trafficking and Holding Migrant Workers in Conditions of Forced Labor in Western New York

Assistant Attorney General Ralph F. Boyd, Jr. and Michael A. Battle, United States Attorney for the Western District of New York, announced an eighteen-count indictment against six defendants who participated in a scheme to recruit, transport and harbor undocumented Mexican migrant workers, and then held them in conditions of forced labor at migrant labor camps near Buffalo, New York.

Department of Justice Deserves Kudos for Cracking Down on Traffickers Exploiting Immigrant Workers

The scheme cooked up by the conspirators involved going to Arizona to recruit and transport undocumented Mexican migrant workers, and then hold them in conditions of peonage in labor camps near Buffalo, New York. In a scenario worthy of a John Steinbeck novel, the roughly forty workers were often not paid for their grueling work, and were subjected to verbal abuse, threats of physical harm if they tried to leave, and, of course, of arrest and deportation by the INS. In the wake of the Supreme Court's March 27, 2002 decision in the Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB case, it goes without saying that the employer did not have to be concerned about a lawsuit demanding back pay by his undocumented workers. "Exploit away!" must have been the watchword.

U.S. Has 10,000 Forced Laborers, Researchers Say

At least 10,000 people are working as forced laborers at any given time across the United States, according to a new report that details the nature and extent of "modern-day slavery." The study says the laborers are working for little or no pay on farms, in restaurants and sweatshops and as domestic servants and prostitutes.

The report, "Hidden Slaves: Forced Labor in the United States," is to be released today on Capitol Hill by the University of California at Berkeley's Human Rights Center and the Washington-based anti-slavery group Free the Slaves.

Part 1: Some foreign household workers enslaved

Among recent cases - • In a middle-class subdivision of Laredo, Texas, known for brick homes and manicured yards, a 12-year-old Mexican girl sent by her family to clean and provide childcare in exchange for schooling was found shackled in a backyard, according to prosecutors. Police were summoned after a neighbor doing roof work looked down, saw the girl and called 911.

The girl had been chained after finishing her work, starved until she became so hungry she ate dirt and tortured by having pepper spray blasted into her eyes when she dozed off, prosecutors say. She was so weak, she had to be carried on a stretcher, prosecutors say, and her skin had been seared red from days in the sun.

Woman held as slave, feds say - (forced to work, sexually abused for 4 years before freed)

An Aurora couple were indicted Thursday, accused of enslaving an Indonesian woman in their home for four years, forcing her to cook and clean without pay. The husband also is accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting the woman, records show.

Federal indictments handed up Thursday accuse the couple of keeping the woman in servitude to care for their children and perform other domestic chores without paying her.

U.S., Canadian And Mexican Representatives Meet To Combat Sexual Exploitation Of Children

Conferees will look at a situation in which thousands of children are trafficked into North America for sexual purposes annually from poorer nations in Central and South America, Central and Eastern Europe and East and Southeast Asia. The commercial sexual trade of at least 200,000 children was documented in a report released earlier this year by Richard Estes, a Penn professor of social work and the conference's chair.

Other newly released information from the Penn study shows that Canada is an easy gateway into the U.S. for sexually exploited children from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia and Central and Eastern Europe. "Due to relaxed border controls between the U.S. and Canada," Estes said, " trafficked children are able to be moved with comparative ease and meet with little or no official interference."

Slavery in America

A SLAVE'S STORY - THONGLIM KAMPIRANON - ( Translated ) I would wake up about 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning and start cleaning the house. Around 10:00, Supewon would then take me to the restaurant. I'd work there until about midnight. When I got back home, I could only have a few hours sleep and then I had to wake up and start cleaning the house again the next morning.

Fact Sheet - Worker Exploitation

WORKER EXPLOITATION CASES -

v On Friday, March 23, 2001, Mr. Kill Soo Lee was arrested in American Samoa on a two count federal complaint charging violations of the slavery statutes. These charges are based on allegations that Mr. Lee held mostly female workers from Vietnam in involuntary servitude at his garment factory by threatening to enslave them over the next 20 years. This is the second case brought under the Victims of Trafficking of Violence Protection Act. U.S. v. Soo Lee

v In March of 2001, Lakireddy Bali Reddy, a landlord in Berkeley, California, pleaded guilty to trafficking women into the United States and placing them into sexual servitude. An expanded investigation revealed that Reddy and certain family members conspired to bring at lest 25 Indian laborers into the Unites States by conspiring to commit immigration fraud. U.S. v. Reddy

v In February of 2001, Michael Allen Lee pleaded guilty to using cocaine, threats and beatings to force homeless African-Americans to work in his agricultural fields in Florida. He indebted the workers through short-term loans and compelled them to harvest his land against their will.U.S. v. Lee>

v In February of 2001, Jose Tecum, an Immokalee, Florida man, was sentenced to nine years in prison for felony counts including kidnaping, slavery, and immigration violations. The defendant was found guilty by a jury of illegally smuggling a young woman from Guatemala and forcing her to work in the migrant fields of Florida and engage in sex acts.U.S. v. Tecum

HIDDEN IN THE HOME: Abuse of Domestic Workers with Special Visas in the United States

SUMMARY - In the worst cases, the domestic workers are victims of trafficking-deceived about the conditions of their employment, brought to the United States, and held in servitude or performing forced labor. They work up to nineteen hours per day; are allowed to leave their employers' premises rarely and virtually never alone; are paid far less than the minimum wage, sometimes $100 or less per month; are ordered not to speak with individuals outside their employers' families; and are psychologically, physically and/or sexually abused. In these cases, workers' isolation is so extreme and the culture of fear created by their employers through explicit threats and/or psychological domination is so great that the workers believe they will suffer serious harm if they leave their jobs and have no choice but to remain in and continue laboring in abusive conditions.

Drama marks 'modern-day slavery' trial

Sitting on the witness stand in federal court, the 20-year-old Guatemalan woman wouldn't look at the man accused of kidnapping her from her mountain village and taking her to the farm fields last fall to work in indentured servitude.

Imported Servants Allege Abuse By Foreign Host Families in U.S.

Thousands of domestic servants are being brought into the United States from impoverished countries and then severely exploited by foreign employers, many of whom work for embassies and international organizations in the Washington area, according to human rights groups, immigration attorneys and former domestics.

An Ethiopian woman who was brought to the United States in 1990 by an IMF official says she toiled for more than eight years in a Silver Spring apartment until she escaped in May. She says her employers forced her to work seven days a week, isolated her from other people and hit her if she complained.

Another Ethiopian says she received no pay for more than six years of work in the Rockville home of an Ethiopian-born couple who arranged for her to come to the United States on a tourist visa. She says her duties included caring for the couple's sick child on 24-hour call.

A nanny from the Philippines says three other Filipinos -- her employers and a friend of theirs -- arranged to bring her in fraudulently under a visa for servants of embassy employees, then put her to work in Fairfax for 41 cents an hour. For more than a year before she escaped, she says, she had to work 16 hours a day and received only one day off during the entire period.

One FBI-led team is investigating a well-off Brazilian businessman and his wife who allegedly held an illiterate servant from their homeland in slave-like conditions for 19 years while she worked in their suburban Maryland home. The servant, who is about 60, came to authorities' attention recently when she had to be hospitalized for treatment of a long-neglected stomach tumor. She told local social workers that she sometimes had to beg neighbors for food and clothing and was regularly beaten by the wife. She said the couple told her that if she fled their home, she would be arrested immediately because she is black.

Sexual Slavery in Southern California Today? Epidemic, say officials

trafficking case/US govt action

Sixteen members of a Mexican family operation headquartered in Veracruz were accused [in a 52-count indictment in Fort Pierce, Florida] of luring young women to the United States with the promise of a better life and then forcing them into prostitution to pay off their smuggling fees.

International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A Contemporary Manifestation of Slavery and Organized Crime

ABSTRACT : Trafficking of women and children for the sex industry and for labor is prevalent in all regions of the United States. An estimated 45,000 to 50,000 women and children are trafficked annually to the United States, primarily by small crime rings and loosely connected criminal networks. The trafficked victims have traditionally come from Southeast Asia and Latin America; however, increasingly they are coming from the New Independent States and Central and Eastern Europe. Trafficking to the US is likely to increase given weak economies and few job opportunities in the countries of origin; low risk of prosecution and enormous profit potential for the traffickers; and improved international transportation infrastructures. Though it may be impossible to eradicate trafficking to the US, it is possible to diminish the problem significantly by targeted prevention and micro-credit strategies in the source countries; strengthening the penalties and laws against traffickers in this country; and enhancing assistance and protections for the victims.

All material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use

Human Trafficking in  [USA]  [other countries]

Street Children in  [USA]  [other countries]

Child Prostitution in  [USA]  [other countries]