Human Trafficing -- Rebirth of Slavery

A Thai immigrant woman finally falls asleep at 1:30 a.m.  She’s cramped in a small utility room of her bosses’ posh home in suburban Los Angeles.  She doesn’t rest for long.  By 7:30 a.m., she’s cooking their breakfast, and by 9:30 she’s off to pull a thirteen-hour shift – cooking, cleaning and serving at their upscale restaurant.  In her spare time she’s forced to wash their car, clean their pool, give manicures, pedicures and massages to her boss or serve party guests while crawling to them on her knees.  When she complains and says she wants to leave, her boss threatens to kill her and her family back in Thailand.  Finally, the woman received help from someone who found out about her situation and managed to escape.

Her boss was arrested and publicity about the woman’s experience helped bring to light the existence of an international enterprise, the trafficking of human beings or slavery.

Slavery is an issue that is new to a lot of Americans and new to a lot of people in Los Angeles.  Even with the subsequent publicity around this case, very few people realize that slavery exists in America today.

Many people are unaware of this issue and also have difficulty understanding that it’s real.  There’s an assumption that slavery ended in the 19^th century when it became illegal.  That’s not the case.  It’s never ended in the world.

The CIA estimates that 50,000 people are trafficked into the United States every year.  Ten thousand land in Los Angeles where they are forced to work in brothels, euphemistically called massage parlors, or in sweatshops, restaurants, on farms and as domestics or as sex slaves in private homes.  While Los Angeles receives the largest number of trafficked people other U.S. cities like Seattle, San Jose, Las Vegas, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Washington, D. C., New York, Boston and Philadelphia have also become trafficking centers.

Most of the victims have been duped into believing that they are headed for a better life.  They’re courageous people that have left their countries and their homes in order to provide for their families.  That’s the usual reason that people have believed the deceit of the professional traffickers.

These criminal gangs of traffickers seek out vulnerable women and young girls in the impoverished villages of China, Thailand, Korea, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Romania, the Czech Republic, Russia, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and lure them into a web of servitude from which few can escape.  They are shipped around the world and forced to do whatever they are told.

The traffickers take their passports and tell them that they’ll be arrested or killed if they try to escape.  They’re isolated in a strange country, with no sense of where they are, without friends or family and with no fluency in English they have no ability to read street signs, a newspaper, understand television or ask for help.  They’re trapped.

When massage parlors are raided.  The women are rounded up by police, then bailed out by their captors’ confederates.  Once released they are cycled back into bondage and never heard from again.

There is a growing awareness among law enforcement, immigration personnel and community groups that these people are victims that need help.  Working with these Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and advocacy groups we will uncover how the trafficking is conducted, its effects on the victims and probe what can be done to stop slavery in America and around the world.