International Human Trafficking and Migration
Dreams of America Dashed: Mary's True Story of Slavery
Published August 04, 2009 @ 01:21PM PT
Mary's story was originally collected by The Salvation Army. Human trafficking between the U.S. and Mexico can be especially fluid because of the high demand for cheap labor in the U.S. and the broad border between the two countries. Here's Mary's story:
Mary was born in Mexico. When she was about 17 years old, she was persuaded to go to the USA with the promise that she would have a better life and be provided with a job. A man promised to take her and to look after her.
However, when she arrived in the USA her life got a lot worse. She was given a job at a factory packing vegetables. But she was escorted there and back every day and was never allowed to go anywhere on her own. She was never paid for the work that she did. She was given drugs and was badly abused. She wasn't allowed to go and see a doctor when she was ill or hurt. She wasn't allowed to leave her apartment except when she went to work. The man who took her to the USA threatened her. He said that if she tried to escape she would be deported - sent back to Mexico - or hurt by the immigration authorities.
Eventually Mary managed to escape with her young son. She is now staying in a special center that looks after people who have been trafficked or abused. She is being given shelter, food, clothing and advice about what to do next. She is hoping that she will be able to stay in the United States and start a new life.
Having a child, especially a child the trafficker knows about, changes everything for victims. Most parents would do anything in their power to keep their children safe from harm. Just like victims of domestic violence will stay with an abuser if he threatens to harm the children, so will victims of trafficking stay with a trafficker. In Mary's case, she was able to escape with her child. But many victims' children are back in their home country, and the traffickers threaten to harm them before the victim can get home.
In Recession, Fearful Workers Keep Quiet About Exploitation
Published August 03, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
Undocumented (or documented) immigrant workers being exploited at work is sadly nothing new. But in today's economy, many of the workers who previously might have spoken up about workplace abuse or exploitation are now keeping their heads down and their lips shut for fear of losing their jobs.
New America Media tells the story of Clemente Rodriguez, a documented immigrant who works 14 hour days in a shoe store in New York City. Despite the fact that New York just raised their minimum wage from $7.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour, Clemente only get $35 a day for his work. He should be making at least $101.50.
Clemente, like many other migrant and immigrant workers, is being exploited by his employer. And now he's got a tough choice to make: file a legal complaint and risk losing a job he can't replace or suck it up and take the exploitation. Clemente's thoughts are,
I know that it is important and it will help us someday. It is good for the government's record, but not for my family. If I don't have a job, what will happen now? I think it's still better to have a small income, overcome my hardships, and make sure that I'll bring food to our table.
Clemente's specific case may not legally rise to the level of human trafficking since he is free to leave his job, though, arguably has no other reasonable options. However, one technique traffickers use to keep workers enslaved is to pay them something small instead of stealing all their wages. Especially in times of recession like this one when employment can be extremely hard to come by, workers like Clemente might decide that $2.50 an hour is better than nothing.
Think about what you would put up with to keep your current job in this economy. Would you take a cut in pay or benefits? Would you put up with your boss grabbing your ass or making lewd comments? Could you handle being paid less than is legal?
Now think about what someone who is truly desperate to keep a job would put up with in order to feed his or her family and stay in the U.S. Wage theft? Sexual assault or rape? Slavery?
It's a tough market for everyone, but even tougher for those who must keep their current job at any cost, no matter how terrible.
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The Role of Parents in Child Trafficking
Published August 01, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
Across the world and here in the U.S., parents sometimes play a role in the trafficking of their own children. The parents' intentions vary from the purely criminal to the completely innocent, and everywhere in between. Here are some of the common ways in which parents play a role in the trafficking of their children.
Parents Directly Traffick Kids
Sadly, sometimes, parents directly traffick their children. I worked with one case in the U.S. where a father was giving his young sons to pedophiles in exchange for beer and cigarettes. A case recently cited in the State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report involved a five-year-old sold into prostitution by her stepmother in Nicaragua. Direct parental trafficking can be as simple as a mother trading her teenage daughter to the landlord for rent that month, or as complicated as parents involved in a larger, multi-child crime ring. In my experience, the smaller scale parental trafficking, and especially in exchange for drugs, rent, food, etc. is more often the case.
Parents Knowingly Sell Children into Trafficking
Often, this is the sort of parental trafficking you hear about in the media: A destitute family in India/Thailand/Bolivia sells one child into slavery in order to feed the rest. Sometimes the situation is that simple, but more frequently it's more complicated. Parents may realize they are signing their child into debt bondage, but believe the debt can be worked off or is limited to a short time period. Parents may intend to send their child to work, but may believe he or she will be better paid, better fed, or work in less dangerous conditions than turns out to be the case. In one case, a Bangladeshi mother sold her daughter into debt bondage to work as a domestic servant but thought the debt would be repaid in 5 years and the daughter well-fed during her time working. In reality, the debt continued to grow and the girl was allowed a small bowl of rice a day, with a serving of vegetables once a week.
Parents Are Negligent or Abusive and Allow Trafficking
Parental negligence or abuse can allow for child trafficking to occur. Children may run away from an abusive home and fall victim to traffickers. They may be more susceptible to predatory pimps offering them the love they have been stared for. Parental negligence may even make it easier for traffickers to kidnap children or otherwise force them away from home. In the U.S., foster youth are extremely vulnerable to trafficking in part because of issues with parental negligence and abuse. I worked with one case of a girl who was trafficked into prostitution at 15 because she ran away from a negligent, abusive home.
Parents Are Duped By Traffickers
In some cases, traffickers trick parents into believing their children are going to school or to work, especially in another country, and will be well-paid and cared for. Sometimes the trafficker is a distant relative promising a Western education. Sometimes the trafficker is promising a job as dancer/waitress/model which turns out to be prostitution. Sometimes, once the child is gone and no money is sent home and no letter written, the parents realize what has happened. Other times, traffickers may force or forge correspondence home to tell the parents their children are safe and happy and the money is being put in a "special account". This is a common technique of traffickers, especially where parents are poorly educated or illiterate.
West Africa to EU: Major Sex Trafficking Circuit
Published July 31, 2009 @ 08:07AM PT
A report released by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime this week identified a major and continuous trafficking route from Western Africa to Western Europe. Most of the people moved along this route are women and girls from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Cameroon on their way to be forced into prostitution in the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and other EU countries. You can read the report here.
According to the report, this trafficking circuit is huge. It moves between 3800 and 5700 women into the EU annually, to the tune of over $200 million dollars a year. And yet despite those huge numbers, it is estimated that West African trafficking victims comprise only about 10% of the trafficking victims enslaved in commercial sex in Western Europe. If $200 million dollars is only a tiny percentage of the money being made through forced prostitution in Europe, imagine how much money exists in the industry as a whole. We're talking billions of dollars generated by the enslavement of human beings all over Europe. And when there is that much money to be had by the criminals, you can be the crime becomes harder to fight.
The system usually used on this circuit is debt bondage. The trafficker gives the victim a "loan" of somewhere between $40,000 and $55,000 to cover the costs of entry into the EU, usually including false documents, transportation, housing, etc. The trafficker then creates a "contract" detailing the method and time period of repayment. However, victims are often deceived about the nature and conditions of work awaiting them. Even if the victims know they will be engaging in prostitution in Europe, they are often lied to about the working conditions, their ability to leave or say "no", or the amount of money they will get to keep. Victims are then forced into prostitution on the traffickers terms "until the debt is repaid", which is sometimes never.
More often than not, victims are flown in (another reason we need better training for immigration personnel at airports). Adult women may be presented as the trafficker's wife or newly hired maid. Minor girls are often told to ask for asylum, after which they are placed temporarily in a juvenile shelter. It's easy for the trafficker to then take the girl from the shelter. Once in the EU, the victims are often rotated between countries or cities. This serves the dual purpose of keeping the faces (and bodies) changing for the male buyers and keeping the victims disoriented and confused.
This route is one which the international community has known about for a long time. But because of the hidden nature of the crime, it is still thriving.
Italian Trafficking Ring Busted, 17 Arrested
Published July 30, 2009 @ 08:02AM PT
Italian law enforcement agents are patting themselves on the back today after busting a huge country-wide and international human trafficking ring. Police have arrested 17 men on charges of human trafficking and aiding illegal immigration.
This particular trafficking ring brought men from Asia, primarily Bangladesh and Pakistan, into Italy to work in agriculture. The men had to pay 10,000 Euros to their captors in order to be smuggled into the country and placed in a agricultural job. Afterwards, they found they had a debt which could not be paid off.
This story is a great example of how sometimes international trafficking rings are highly specialized, moving people from one country into one country to work in one industry. A specialized criminal enterprise such as this one can be easier to operate, because you can perfect your techniques and pay off a minimal number of corrupt officials in order to succeed. It's also important to keep in mind that several human trafficking operations can be taking place in the same country at the same time. If they move in different industries, they may not know about each other. Apparently, this ring was operating for years. Here are some of the other, unrelated operations which existed simultaneously:
- Women and girls from Albania were brought in to Italy via boat and trafficked into commercial sex.
- Nigerian women were brought in via Spain and trafficked into Italian brothels and private homes as domestic servants.
- Chinese men and women were trafficked in Italy in forded labor.
- Roma children were trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced begging.
The kicker is, Italy actually has it's act together as a country and is identifying and prosecuting trafficking. And if all these unrelated trafficking rings can operate in a wealthy, educated, politically motivated country like Italy, just think what they can do in poor countries like Bangladesh and Bolivia. Or developing countries like Honduras and Namibia. Or dictatorial countries like Burma and North Korea. This list of co-occuring trafficking rings would be much longer.
National political will, national resources, and training and education for law enforcement remain some of the best tools we have for combating trafficking. Congratulations to Italy for their recent success.
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Who's Watching the Watchmen?
Published July 23, 2009 @ 12:32PM PT
In the past few days, immigration officials in both Malaysia and the UK have been caught assisting human traffickers in moving victims into their countries. Immigration officials are poised to be life-savers when it comes to spotting trafficked persons, but they can just as easily switch sides to help the traffickers and their own pocket book.
In Malaysia, the suspects would allegedly directly hand deported immigrants to human traffickers at the Thai-Malaysian border, instead of depositing them in Thailand. Each immigration officials would receive about $100 per human they gave to the traffickers. The deportees would soon find themselves slaves, most often in Thailand's fishing industry.
In the UK, border officials took bribes from and traded favors with trafficking rings over a number or years. In some cases, money exchanged hands directly. In others, the officials and the traffickers formed "mutually beneficial relationships," which allowed them to earn over $1 million a year. A recent report from the UK states that many traffickers find it "relatively easy" to move their victims through the UK.
Corrupt immigration officials are one of the greatest tools at a trafficker's disposal if he wants to move his victims internationally. Who knows who many innocent people were handed over to human traffickers because a group of Malaysians and a group of Brits decided to make a few extra bucks? We trust these officials to put the safety of the citizens of their country and all other countries first. They are our watchmen, and they break that trust when they use it to traffick human beings.
It begs the question recently asked by Hollywood, and which should be asked by all of us about our public officials, in light of these events: Who's watching the watchmen?
Image from iwatchstuff.com
How You Rescue a Child From Slavery
Published July 16, 2009 @ 07:06AM PT
The issue of how to best remove children from human trafficking situations, and more importantly what to do with them when they are removed, is as complex as it is important. And it's not a process in which there can be many mistakes.
Unabridged has a great article this week about the steps one man named George takes to free children from slavery in the fishing industry in Ghana. It's a process, which in this case, can take up to six months. After identifying a child in slavery, he must then find the parents, convince them of the reality of their child's situation, and secure a legal means for their release into his care. By this time, the traffickers and the child have sometimes moved to a different place.
While this article is an interesting example of how to find and help child slaves, it's important to remember that removing children from different industries and in different countries will look very different. Sometimes, removal is accomplished by a raid by local law enforcement, a tool often used on illegal brothels or work sites with a high immigrant populations. Other times, children can be removed by the intervention of families, NGOs or community based groups. Occasionally, a child may escape his or her trafficker and seek help at a service agency. In short, there is no one universal way to rescue a child from slavery.
While the process of getting a child out of an exploitative situation is important, what happens next is arguable even more crucial. Children who are removed from slavery and not given proper services and resources are incredibly vulnerable to be re-trafficked. Since in all parts of the world, NGOs and shelters are underfunded and often at capacity, children are often rescued only to have no place to go. It's these situations which are often most dangerous for the children. This one of the many reasons that collaboration and coordination between law enforcement, NGOs, shelters, and other groups working with trafficked persons is so crucial.
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