Report details human smuggling
Thousands forced to work in the US
WASHINGTON -- As many as 17,500 people each year are brought to the United States by human traffickers who trap them in slavery-like conditions for forced sex, sweatshop labor, and domestic servitude, the Justice Department reported yesterday.
"In the United States, where slavery was outlawed nationally more than 130 years ago, this tragic phenomenon should no longer exist; yet it does," the Justice Department said in a report to Congress.
In separate testimony on Capitol Hill, a top Homeland Security Department official estimated that human trafficking generates some $9.5 billion worldwide each year for criminal organizations.
"These untraced profits feed organized crime activities," John Torres of Immigration and Customs Enforcement told a House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration.
A law passed by Congress in 2000 allowed prosecutors to bring new charges against human traffickers. Using that law, the Justice Department as of April 2004 had 153 open investigations, double the number at the same point in 2001.
From January 2001 through mid-May of this year, prosecutors have charged 149 individuals in trafficking cases and won 94 convictions or guilty pleas, about twice the number recorded over the previous three years, according to the report. The number of prosecutions since 2001 represents a threefold increase over the three previous years.
R. Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said the Justice Department hoped to increase prosecutions in the coming months by focusing resources on selected cities and joining forces with state and local police. Philadelphia, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Tampa are the first four cities getting intensified anti-trafficking attention.
"While we're gratified that we've tripled prosecutions, we need to do more, and we are doing more," Acosta said.
Some recent examples:
Seven people pleaded guilty in 2003 in south Texas to charges they brought women across the Mexican border to trailer homes where they were raped and forced to do housework. The ringleader, Juan Carlos Soto, was sentenced to 23 years in prison, and the women were paid restitution.
Two people pleaded guilty, and one was convicted of illegally bringing more than 250 Vietnamese and Chinese women to work in an American Samoa garment factory. The women experienced food deprivation, beatings, and physical restraint and were forced to live in guarded barracks. The main defendant, Kil Soo Lee, faces a June sentencing date.
Ramiro Ramos was sentenced in March to 180 months in prison for illegally transporting Mexican workers to fruit fields in Florida, where the victims were threatened with beating and death if they tried to leave.
About two-thirds of the cases prosecuted involve prostitution or sex slavery, with most of the rest involving forced labor.
