- Originally published in the Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL) April 11, 2005 Copyright 2005 Sun-Sentinel Company
BY Ruth Morris Staff Writer
The
three women were promised jobs as waitresses, a softer life in a new
place. But once they had arrived in Florida, they were dropped off at
dingy bordellos -- not diners -- and pressed into work as prostitutes.
Later,
with their johns in jail and prosecutors eager to hear their testimony,
the three disappeared, melting into a faceless community of
undocumented immigrants who have paid the steepest fares for their
passage into the United States.
"No one
wants to cooperate. No one wants to make a declaration, so we have no
information," said an embassy worker who interviewed the women last
year and who requested anonymity because of the delicate and dangerous
nature of the case. "Our people don't complain. They don't consider it
a crime. They think it's a blessing that they can come."
The
case was unusual, not because of the women's refusal to come forward,
but because it came to light at all. Experts say thousands of
immigrants are trafficked into the United States every year, pressed
into work in factories or fields, held ransom, or, in extreme cases,
bused to brothels to work to pay off a debt to their "coyote," or
smuggler. Most cases go unreported, aid workers say, for fear of
beatings, deportation or reprisals against family members. And as the
case of the three prostitutes suggests, few victims find their way to
help, let alone a witness stand.
According
to the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank,
the smuggling and trafficking of women and children is the second most
profitable criminal activity in the world, following only drug
trafficking. An interagency government report estimates 14,000 to
17,500 immigrants are trafficked into the United States annually, with
Florida the third most common destination after New York and California.
"The
numbers are the tip of the iceberg. This is really a below-the-surface,
hidden crime," said Leslye Boban, director of the Florida Freedom
Partnership, which offers housing and counseling to victims of human
trafficking.
Having come to the United
States illegally, victims often fear they'll be deported if they speak
to police, she said. They prefer to lie low or go home. The Trafficking
Victim Protection Act of 2000 brought some cases forward by offering
immigrants work permits and a reprieve from deportation if they would
testify against trafficking suspects. Florida adopted similar
legislation at the state level last year, but few immigrants know it
exists.
"It takes a long time for the talk on the street to pick up on it," Boban said.
Efforts
to reach out to victims coincide with a national push to close off the
porous U.S.-Mexican border, where hundreds of thousands of immigrants
cross illegally every year. Immigrant advocates say beefed up
enforcement has failed to stop the flow while channeling immigrants
towards the Arizona desert, where dozens have died of dehydration.
"It's
harder and more dangerous to cross, and that has created a very
lucrative business for human traffickers," said Jorge Lomonaco, the
Mexican consul general in Miami. "When you increase the risks, you set
the scene for organized crime to get involved."
Only
two trafficking cases have made headlines in Florida in recent years.
In 2002, three citrus contractors were convicted of conspiring to hold
farm workers against their will, patrolling a work camp with guns. In
1998, the FBI smashed a Mexican prostitution ring that was bringing
immigrants as young as 13 to work off smuggling fees in run-down South
Florida brothels.
In a third case that may
be prosecuted as human trafficking, police last week rescued a
Guatemalan girl, Susana Jose, 18, from smugglers. The two suspects in
that case allegedly brought her across the Mexican border, then
threatened to "sell" her when her parents couldn't come up with all the
money they owed for her journey. Lantana police found $11,000 in the
men's vehicle, along with a ledger listing names presumed to be other
smuggled immigrants.
"The immigration
system is broken, and we're shrugging our shoulders," said Greg Schell,
a lawyer and director of the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project in Lake
Worth. To make his point, Schell flipped through a stack of pay stubs
from a pending case. The slips, belonging to a farm worker, listed
income and federal tax deductions in neat boxes. But scrawled clumsily
along the bottom, by hand, was a large "C" for coyote, and a $60
charge. Another subtraction, for $100, was marked with an "R" for rent.
Schell
said trafficking cases are fairly infrequent, but there are variations
on the theme. In peonage, immigrants work off their debts to smugglers,
for example, in Florida's tomato fields and orange groves. The
difference is they agree to do so.
"These
are almost daily cases," said a Guatemalan who lives in Palm Beach
County of the recent rescue of Jose, who was freed from her captors
after a televised police chase. He also requested anonymity, for fear
of reprisals, but said he, too, was held for ransom by traffickers when
he came to the United States in the late 1980s. He was held for 18
days, he said, and only occasionally fed scraps, when his coyote
claimed his $300 smuggling fee hadn't been deposited in the proper
account.
Yet his memory of the incident
was laced with resignation, illustrating why such crimes have been so
difficult for investigators to crack.
A Global Problem
In
2004, victims trafficked around the world were from Africa, East Asia
and the Pacific, Europe and Eurasia, Near East, South Asia, and the
Western Hemisphere.
80 percent are female, 70 percent of whom were for commercial sex industry
The
largest number, between 5,000 and 7,000, of those trafficked into the
United States were from East Asia and the Pacific, followed by Latin
America and Europe and Eurasia
Between
fiscal years 2000 and 2003, 448 certifications were issued to
adult-trafficking victims, according to the Dept. of Health and Human
Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement.
French police estimate that 90 percent of the 15,000 to 18,000 prostitutes working in France are trafficking victims.
In
Uganda, the rebel organization Lord's Resistance Army forces abducted
children to work as cooks, porters, agricultural workers and combat
soldiers; girls are subjected to sex slavery under the guise of forced marriage.
The
State Department classifies Cuba as a country of "internal"
trafficking, for sexual exploitation and forced labor. Child sexual
victims are generally teenage girls 14 to 17 exploited as prostitutes
within the tourism industry.
Nepal is a
source country for girls and women trafficked to India for forced
prostitution, domestic servitude, forced labor and work in circuses.
Source: 2004 Trafficking in persons report, U.S. State Department