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Slavery Returns
By Greg L | 7 March 2008 | Illegal Aliens, Prince William County | 8 Comments
The Washington Post highlights the growing problem of human trafficking of illegal aliens who are enslaved and forced to work as prostitutes in today’s edition. This is probably the most disturbing aspect of the exploitation that all too often characterizes the illegal immigration problem in the United States. In many cases, it’s a matter of an unscrupulous business exploiting a desperate but willing illegal alien so it can pad it’s bottom line. In some, illegal aliens end up enslaved into prostitution rings where they suffer the most horrible abuse one could imagine. It gets so bad that children, sometimes fourteen and even younger are sold by their very own families into slavery in Central America and smuggled into the United States where they will earn tens of thousands of dollars each year for the slavers who prostitute them. Hundreds of Americans died during the effort to eradicate slavery, but not for the purpose of seeing slaves imported over a hundred years later to be prostitutes.
The law enforcement challenge here is tremendous. These relatively sophisticated crime organizations, sometimes backed by gangs which provide enforcers who mete out punishment to misbehaving slaves in return for free prostitutes, are tremendously difficult to detect and prosecute. Language barriers, the mobility of these organizations, and that these sometimes operate within relatively closed ethnic communities, along with fear of retaliation make these tragedies a huge challenge for law enforcement. The Washington Post tells us that this horrible practice has moved to Prince William County, which is by no means a surprise to anyone who has been closely watching the community, but it doesn’t give us much we can use to understand the scope of what this problem really looks like.
The New York Times discussed a case of prostitute slaves that was prosecuted in New York not too long ago:
The women generally worked from 11 A.M. to 4 A.M. every day, she said, and had sex on average with two men a night.
Along with marketing women who “belonged” to other bosses, Ms. Adkins said she bought six or seven women outright. They cost $6,000 to $15,000, she said, calling the business very profitable. One woman whom she bought for $9,000 had to pay her back in 270 “quotas” — 270 men for $27,000. Other women had to repay their smugglers by having sex with 380 to 500 men, she said. All were charged $300 a week for room and board, payable through sex with three more men…
The Thai man who enticed Na to America, Jawarit Sillaphanond, testified as part of his plea bargain that he had put seven women in the brothel, lying to some that they would work in restaurants and to others that they would be prostitutes but free ones, able to choose their men and come and go. Once they were under his control, he threatened to hunt them down and hurt them if they escaped, he said. The Thai women were all on tourist visas, obtained by forging letters from companies saying they were employees.
Witnesses said Chinese and Vietnamese gangsters were also involved in the brothel, collecting protection money and hunting down escaped prostitutes.
In South Carolina, law enforcement is starting to come to terms with the problem. Instead of just looking at prostitutes as simply illegal aliens, they’re also seeing them as the victims that they are. Here’s an early case:
An example is a 2005 case out of Myrtle Beach. Martin Carbajal-Servin and Estella Aguilar-Ortiz, a husband and wife who were here illegally, pleaded guilty to enticing women into prostitution. Carbajal-Servin got two years in prison; Aguilar-Ortiz was sentenced to 11 months.
One of the victims in that case, an illegal alien from Mexico, told authorities that a woman approached her in Charlotte and promised her a better job in Myrtle Beach, according to federal court documents.
When she got there, the victim told authorities, Carbajal-Servin and Aguilar-Ortiz forced her to work as a prostitute. Customers paid $30 for 15 minutes with her, and she was given either a card or a token for each customer. She turned in her tokens to the man in charge, and that’s how they kept track of how much money she made, according to court documents.
The victim told police that her captors threatened to kill her if she did not have sex with the customers.
And again, in Tennessee, a place not generally known as a hotbed for illegal aliens but which hasn’t escaped this problem:
At the age of 13, they say, she was smuggled into the U.S. from Oaxaca, Mexico, the first leg of a horrific journey that led her to a Harding Place area apartment. There she was beaten, raped and forced into a life of prostitution — an ordeal requiring her to have sex with as many as 40 men a day.
This week federal authorities said they arrested two people and charged them with the sex trafficking of children. Juan Mendez and Cristina Andres Perfecto, both of Nashville, were named Thursday in a complaint filed in federal court in Memphis.
Federal officials in Memphis, who began the investigation, and Metro police, who assisted in a raid at the Harding Place area apartment last week, said it is the first case to their knowledge involving children smuggled into the country to be forced into the sex trade.
You better believe this is happening here, folks. There have been at least three busts within a mile of my house over the past several years where single family residences had been turned into brothels. Whether these involved enslavement of the prostitutes has been unreported, perhaps because it has only been recently that law enforcement has begun to understand the human trafficking element in prostitution and hasn’t been looking for it until recently.
Dealing with the slavers when they’re found is pretty straightforward. You prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law, punish them as harshly as the law allows, and if they are illegal aliens you deport them. What of the enslaved prostitutes who are illegal aliens, though? You may need their testimony to prosecute the slavers, and their dual status as both deportable illegal alien and crime victim makes handling their case a delicate balancing act. Just because they were enslaved by human traffickers shouldn’t mean that they’re automatically entitled to legal residency, but treating them as garden variety illegal aliens is the wrong answer here, too.
I hope as this issue gains attention, it inspires some human rights organization to help these victims return to their country of origin in a more gentle manner than deportation and assist them in putting their shattered lives back together. In order to reduce the supply of exploitable victims, they could spread the word about what the reality is behind the false dreams that traffickers offer, and hopefully reduce the number of women and children who are ensnared in this tragedy. I’ve no doubt that in the aftermath of a local case this community would help support the effort with their time and contributions, especially after they learn the specifics of what horrors await the victims of these nefarious schemes.
Is there anyone out there trying to help these folks before they fall victim here?
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8 Comments
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It is a worldwide problem. We used to see the girls arriving on the TACA flight from El Salvador. They had visas and rarely overstayed them, so that they could come back and make more money. The girls that get tricked into coming here make up about half of the sex workers. Once again, by another culture. The states would be the most effective at stopping this practice with raids on massage parlors and detaining illegals for ICE.
How can someone like Nancy Lyall be against the resolution when it will be protecting people like this.
Because she can’t think beyond her nose. All that matters to her is that she protects her “Race”. Which, incidently, hispanics are not a race.
American males provide the demand for prostitutes. The dirty, filthy johns who use them should also be arrested and proseucted.
http://thetroublemaker.blogspot.com/2008/02/nc-human-trafficking-investigation.html
Ducky,
The articles I’ve read recently on the sex slave trade in the Post and their links from that story indicate that it’s not American males providing the demand but it’s the illegal aliens providing the demand.
Ducky makes a good point. Punish the buyers as severely as the sellers.
Dave- illegal aliens have their own cat houses. Americans tend to keep to the massage parlors.
Remember, everybody-they’re just doing the work that citizens won’t do!
“The dirty, filthy johns who use them should also be arrested and proseucted.”
I agree 100% Ducky…and then we can just deport their a**es out of here!