Human Trafficking

The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons, by the means of the threat or the use of force, or by others forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control of another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. -United Nations

I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents…. They are accidents and no one’s fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishments for concealed sins. And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul? ...to a monster, the norm must seem monstrous since everyone is normal to himself…. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. -John Steinbeck -“East of Eden,” p.71

Picture Legend:

1. Human Trafficking
2. Sex Trafficking in Cambodia
3. Child Soldiers in Uganda
4. Organ Trafficking
5. Labor Trafficking in Domestic Service
6. Children Trafficked to Beg
7. Labor Trafficking for Construction
8. Labor Trafficking in Thailand
9. Sex Trafficking in Germany
10. Human Trafficking in the United States
11. “Global Estimates of Modern Slavery,” 2017
12. Peonage
13. H-2A Visas
14. Agricultural Worker Sexual and Labor Abuse
15. Coalition of Immokalee Workers
16. Magazine Sales Crew Bondage
17. Thomas Dale DeLay
18. Jack Allan Abramoff
19. Northern Mariana Islands
20. Rep. George Miller, D. CA
21. Garment Industry Labor Trafficking
22. Forced Marriage
23. Massage Therapy Slaves
24. Nail Salon Slaves
25. Restaurant and Food Industry Trafficking
26. Polaris

   In Cambodia, five-year-old Srey was sold by her parents to a brothel. She was probably sold for somewhere between $10 and $100. The child was drugged to gain her compliance and passed from one customer to the next. This small child suffered months of abuse from pimps and sex tourists. At the age of six, Srey was rescued from the life of a sex slave by a former prostitute who ran victim shelters for Cambodia’s rescued children. Somaly Mam, who runs the shelter, describes Srey as “timid, quiet, and damaged.” The child was diagnosed as HIV positive and suffering from pneumonia and tuberculosis. Other children at the shelter with Srey may be even more traumatized. One child who had been imprisoned for two years in a cage where she was repeatedly raped is suffering from profound psychological trauma.

   In 2001, 27-year-old Sergey from Perm in Russia responded to an advertisement in a local newspaper for a job in construction work in Spain. The job agency promised a salary of US$1,200 per month, six times more than Sergey’s monthly salary of $200 in Perm. Sergey’s application was accepted and the agency paid for his plane ticket to Madrid on the condition that the money would be paid back when Sergey started work. Upon arrival, Sergey was met by someone from the agency who took his passport, brought him to Portugal, and forced him to work on a construction site for several months without pay. Sergey was held captive behind a barb-wire fence. He finally managed to escape and “begged his way to Germany.” Because he had no passport, Sergey was arrested by the German authorities who, according to Sergey, “beat him and took away what little money he had before deporting him to Russia.” Sergey is back home but traumatized by his experience. He reportedly is suffering from psychological problems and was unable to work for several months.

   Sixteen year old Susan, abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, reported the following:

   One boy tried to escape, but he was caught. They made him eat a mouthful of red pepper, and five people were beating him. His hands were tied, and then they made us, the other new captives, kill him with a stick. I felt sick. I knew this boy from before. We were from the same village. I refused to kill him and they told me they would shoot me. They pointed a gun at me, so I had to do it. The boy was asking me, “Why are you doing this?” I said I had no choice. After we killed him, they made us smear his blood on our arms. I felt dizzy. There was another dead body nearby, and I could smell the body. I felt so sick. They said we had to do this so we would not fear death and so we would not try to escape.

   I feel so sad about the things that I did... It disturbs me so much--that I inflicted death on other people... When I go home I must do some traditional rites because I have killed. I must perform these rites and cleanse myself. I still dream about the boy from my village who I killed. I see him in my dreams, and he is talking to me and saying I killed him for nothing, and I am crying. -Human Rights Watch (1997).

   John Allan (formerly Mohammed Gheit), 59, and Hassan Zakhalka, 32 persuaded developmentally challenged or mentally ill Arabs from the Galilee region and central Israel to sell a kidney. By placing ads in the newspaper offering money for organ donations, the pair was able to identify potential donors. They gave false information and pressured and threatened the donors to give up their kidney. Following the surgery, the organ brokers refused to pay the donors as promised.

   Henriette was 15 when she was taken by a friend of the family from Togo to work and attend school in Paris. She ended up working as a domestic servant from early morning until late at night and was forced to eat table scraps and sleep on the floor. At the age of 12, Malik was taken from Niger to Mali under the pretense that he would attend a religious school. Instead he was forced to beg on the streets for long hours. Forty two year old Robert was forced to work eight months long, for sometimes 18 hours a day with limited food and no pay in the construction industry in Armenia. Maria, age 16, was tricked by a friend into traveling from her home town in Romania to Bucharest where she was sold into prostitution and kept in line through the threat of beatings. Two 16-year-old Thai boys, Top and Wirat, were drugged, kidnaped, and forced to work under inhumane conditions on a fishing boat off the coast of Thailand for nine months with little food and no pay. Thirty-nine-year-old Lucy was showered with compliments and gifts in her native Kenya. When she traveled to Germany to be with her German “boyfriend,” he forced her into prostitution.

   These are stories of real people. They come from different parts of the world. They differ in age and gender. The jobs they are forced to do vary. But they share one thing in common. They were exploited -- victims of human trafficking. - “Human Trafficking, Human Misery, The Global Trade in Human Beings,” Alexis A. Aronowitz

   A report issued last September attempted to encapsulate the depth of the problem of modern human trafficking and slavery.

   “We now have the largest number of slaves on Earth than we’ve had in human history,” said Andrew Forrest, founder of the Walk Free Foundation, an organization working to end contemporary slavery and human trafficking which co-authored “Global Estimates of Modern Slavery” with the International Labor Organization, or ILO.

   “But we also feel equally as confident that we have the weapons now, we have the communications skills, we have the interest to raise it to public attention,” Forrest said. “As soon as the public becomes aware that slavery exists among them they can ask the question when they’are at the teller, or when they’re at the shops, or when they’re buying clothes, how can I be sure that this clothing, this seafood, this product wasn’t made by slaves? And with that question frees a slave.”

   Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world after drugs, generating approximately $150 billion in profits, according to the ILO.

   The report estimates that “40.3 million people were victims of modern slavery in 2016. In other

words, on any given day in 2016, there were likely to be more than 40 million men, women, and children who were being forced to work against their will under threat or who were living in a forced marriage that they had not agreed to.

   Of these 40.3 million victims:

   ▪ 24.9 million people were in forced labor. That is, they were being forced to work under threat or coercion as domestic workers, on construction sites, in clandestine factories, on farms and fishing boats, in other sectors, and in the sex industry. They were forced to work by private individuals and groups or by state authorities. In many cases, the products they made and the services they provided ended up in seemingly legitimate commercial channels. Forced laborers produced some of the food we eat and the clothes we wear, and they have cleaned the buildings in which many of us live or work.

   ▪ 15.4 million people were living in a forced marriage to which they had not consented. That is, they were enduring a situation that involved having lost their sexual autonomy and often involved providing labor under the guise of “marriage.”

   Women and girls (the 2nd weakest among us and the 2nd least able to defend themselves) are disproportionately affected by modern slavery, accounting for 28.7 million, or 71 per cent of the overall total. More precisely, women and girls represent 99 per cent of victims of forced labor in the commercial sex industry and 58 per cent in other sectors, 40 per cent of victims of forced labor imposed by state authorities, and 84 per cent of victims of forced marriages. One in four victims of modern slavery were children (the weakest among us and the least able to defend themselves). Some 37 per cent (5.7 million) of those forced to marry were children. Children represented 18 per cent of those subjected to forced labor exploitation and 7 per cent of people forced to work by state authorities. Children who were in commercial sexual exploitation (where the victim is a child, there is no requirement of force) represented 21 per cent of total victims in this category of abuse. Over the five years of the reference period used in these estimates, a total of nearly 90 million people were in any of the forms of modern slavery for at least a few days. The average length of time victims were in forced labor varied from a few days or weeks in some forms imposed by state authorities to nearly two years for forced sexual exploitation.

   Modern slavery occurred in every region of the world. Modern slavery was most prevalent in Africa (7.6 per 1,000 people), followed by Asia and the Pacific (6.1 per 1,000) then Europe and Central Asia (3.9 per 1,000). These results should be interpreted cautiously due to lack of available data in some regions, notably the Arab States and the Americas. For forced labor specifically, the prevalence is highest in Asia and the Pacific, where four out of every 1,000 people were victims, followed by Europe and Central Asia (3.6 per 1,000), Africa (2.8 per 1,000), the Arab States (2.2 per 1,000) and the Americas (1.3 per 1,000). While noting limits of the data in key regions, particularly the Arab States, the data suggests prevalence of forced marriage is highest in Africa (4.8 per 1,000), followed by Asia and the Pacific (2.0 per 1,000).”

   Modern slavery is not a problem that is exclusive to other countries, such as shrimp shelling factories in Thailand, brothels and sex tourism in Mexico, the Philippines, and  Japan, and begging children in India. The practices of slavery and human trafficking are prevalent in modern America with an estimated 17,500 foreign nationals and 200,000 Americans being trafficked into and within the United States every year with 80% of those being women and children.

   Labor trafficking is defined by the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000  as “The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery and is most frequently reported in domestic work, restaurants, peddling rings, and sales crews.”

   Peonage, which is also referred to as debt slavery or debt servitude, is a system where an employer (which could be anyone from a farmer with a large agricultural concern to a madam in a brothel)  compels a worker to pay off a debt with work. In some cases, employers advanced workers some pay or initial transportation costs (the alluded cost of getting from a “Source Country,” where victims are recruited or coerced into being trafficked, to “Destination Countries,” countries where these victims are exploited. (Those who fall prey to human trafficking tend to be the most vulnerable -- usually the socially deprived characterized by low income, poor education, and lack of employment. These are typically circumstances of the poor -- even though available data shows that it is not necessarily the poorest people in a country who are trafficked. Research, however, shows that many of the victims assisted by international organizations and non-government agencies (NGOs) invariably come from some of the most poverty stricken countries (for example, Bangladesh, Mali, Moldova, and Nepal).

   Extensive research has been undertaken and victim support provided in Southeast Europe. There it is shown that trafficked victims come from the poorer countries of the region -- Albania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Romania. Albania and Moldova are the poorest in the region and are also primary source countries for trafficked persons. In South Asia, Bangladesh and Nepal (two of the region’s most poverty-stricken countries) are the major source countries. Poverty is seen as the key factor in human trafficking in West and Central Africa and for rural trafficking in China). Source countries tend to be poor, with little or no economic opportunity for its citizens, and destination countries tend to be wealthy. Dominican women are trafficked to Montenegro for commercial sexual exploitation, while Russian students were trafficked to the United States for labor exploitation and forced to sell ice cream. Zambian girls were trafficked to Ireland and Kenyan women were trafficked to Mexico for commercial sexual exploitation. Vietnamese children are trafficked to the United kingdom for forced involvement with drug smuggling and Filipino women are trafficked to Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) for commercial sexual exploitation. Thai men are trafficked to the United States for labor exploitation and debt bondage, Chinese women are trafficked to Afghanistan (which is an exception to the trend of source and destination countries, Afghanistan being one of the poorest nations on the planet. It’s my belief that cultural tendencies regarding women in Afghanistan make prostitutes much sought after) for sexual exploitation. Children in Burma were trafficked into armed conflict), and workers willingly agreed to work without pay in order to pay it off. Sometimes those debts were quickly paid off, and a fair wage worker/employer relationship was established. In many more cases in which slavery is apparent, workers became indebted to planters (through sharecropping loans), merchants (through credit. One could make an argument that the $1 trillion plus (since June) of commercial credit card debt in the United States, and student loan debt, approximately $1.48 trillion in student loan debt, spread out among about 44 million borrowers, is a state sanctioned form of peonage, or debt bondage, and that one making the argument would be right. One could also argue that credit card debt and student loan debt are forms of self imposed debt, and that one would be right as well), or company stores (through living expenses). Workers were often unable to re-pay the debt, and found themselves in a continuous work-without-pay cycle for the remainder of eternity. Often in some countries a debt will become transgenerational, with descendents working to pay off the debt of their forefathers.

   Here is a particularly insidious example of transgenerational debt bondage:

   Raman was born at the same brick kiln site in India where his father and grandfather had worked their entire lives to pay off a debt incurred by his grandfather. For 15 years, Raman and his family earned 3 rupees (2 cents) per 80 kilogram bag of bricks to pay off the $450US advanced by the brick kiln manager. They were beaten with sticks and hit by the owner if they were not working hard enough or producing enough bricks. They could not leave, because the brick kiln owner threatened to hunt them down and beat them or bribe the police into arresting them.

   Back in the United States, in the agriculture sector, the most common victims of trafficking are U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, undocumented immigrants, and foreign nationals with temporary H-2A visas (an H-2A visa allows a foreign national entry into the United States for temporary or seasonal agricultural work). 

   Due to the nature of agricultural work being seasonal and transient, the ability of employers to exploit these workers is high. Such exploitation may take the form of threats of violence and playing on vulnerabilities (i.e. immigration status). In some cases, workers are held in a state of perpetual debt to the crew leaders who impose mandatory transportation, housing and communication fees upon the workers which are high in relation to pay received, therefore further indebting the worker. Crew leaders may also provide workers with H-2A visas and transportation to the place of work from a home  (source) country.

   In 2010, the company Global Horizons, a US-based labor recruiting company, and two Thailand-based recruiters, were indicted on charges of forced labor.  The US Justice Department’s criminal charges alleged the defendants brought hundreds of Thai workers to the US from 2001 to 2007 to work on farms across the country and conspired to hold these workers in forced labor. The indictment alleged that the defendants caused the workers to believe that if they did not work for the defendants, they could be arrested and deported.  The defendants allegedly confiscated the Thai nationals’ passports after their arrival in the US.  Three defendants plead guilty in June of 2011.  On July 20th, 2012, a federal judge dismissed the case, after the prosecutors requested dismissal because they believed they could not prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

   In April 2011, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed two related civil lawsuits.  The first was filed in Hawaii federal court against Global Horizons and six local farms (Captain Cook Coffee, Del Monte Fresh Produce, Kauai Coffee, Kelena Farms, MacFarms of Hawaii and Maui Pineapple Farms).  The second lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington state against Global Horizons and two farms in that state (Green Acre Farms, Valley Fruit Orchards).  In these suits, EEOC alleged that Global Horizons trafficked over 200 men from Thailand between 2003 and 2007 to work at the farms in Washington and Hawaii.  The complaint alleged that the companies subjected Thai workers to mistreatment, intimidation, harassment and inhumane working conditions.  Between July and September of 2011 the defendant farms in Hawaii filed motions to dismiss the suit, claiming EEOC had not alleged sufficient facts to support its claims.  In October 2011, EEOC requested a stay of the proceedings until after the completion of the Global Horizons criminal trial.  On November 2nd, 2011, the federal court dismissed the complaint filed against the six defendant farms but allowed that EEOC could re-file their claims.

   On March 24th, 2014, a federal judge held Global Horizons and Maui Pineapples liable for discriminating and abusing hundreds of Thai workers.  In June 2014, the parties announced that Captain Cook Coffee, Del Monte Fresh Produce, Kauai Coffee, Kelena Farms, and MacFarms of Hawaii had reached an out of court settlement.  In December 2014, in the district court of Hawaii, the judge ruled that Global Horizons and Maui Pineapples should pay $12.3 million in damages to 82 claimants.

   On April 26, 2016, a federal judge ruled that Global Horizons should pay $7,658,500 in damages to the claimants that suffered discrimination, harassment and mistreatment.

   Ronald Evans recruited homeless men from shelters, forced them to work on his farm, and kept them in debt by selling them beer and overpriced and highly addictive crack cocaine on credit. The men would be lured from Miami with promises of a decent wage, hot meals, and a place to stay. Instead, they were forced to work on one of Ronald Evan’s work camps in northeast Florida or North Carolina. When police raided the east Palatka, Florida, camp in June of 2005, they found 148 individually wrapped crack cocaine rocks -- one nights supply. Evans was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.

   When Alejandrina Carrera first came to the United States from Mexico 20 years ago, a migrant farmworker in search of a better life. She was just 14 years old, scared, vulnerable, and alone.

"I was very young, I didn't have my father or mother, no one," she says.

   Carrera says she found work on a farm, and it wasn't long before her supervisor tried to take advantage of her. He promised her an easier job inside a warehouse. But as soon as she got in his truck, she says, he drove to a remote part of the farm and tried to force her to have sex with him.

   "He told me if we don't do this the easy way, we'll do it the hard way. I was afraid and trembling," she says.

   Now 35, Carrera recalls with gratitude the farmworker who heard her screams and rescued her before she could be raped. She also remembers how they both were fired the next day.

   Protections against that type of labor abuse against migrant workers in the United States were virtually non-existent in the 1990's.

   "No one knew anything about rights," Carrera says. "We didn't seek out what our worker rights were. We just accepted everything they told us and just did our jobs."  

   In 1993, a group of American activists and migrant farmworkers decided to change that. They founded the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a non-profit grassroots organization dedicated to improving the wages and working conditions of migrant farmworkers.

   The organization is named after the migrant town of Immokalee, Florida, the epicenter of tomato production in the United States. Ninety-percent of all winter tomatoes consumed in the US come from Florida. Immokalee also used to be known as ground zero for modern day slavery (Immokalee was once home to some of the most brutal atrocities against human rights in the United States. Since 1997, the Justice Department has prosecuted seven slavery cases in Florida, four involving tomato harvesters. More than 1,200 people have been freed from agricultural slavery rings in Florida during the last 10 to 15 years. Workers tell stories of brutal beatings, being shackled in chains at night, no regular pay for work, housing where 20 pickers share one mobile home and are each charged upwards of $200 per month in rent. Yes, per person. No shade in the fields, no breaks for meals, 10 to 12 hour workdays, seven days a week. With financial obligations and no way to escape).

   Farms and fishing boats have long been some the world's least-regulated workplaces, says Laura Germino, who coordinates the anti-slavery campaign for the CIW.

   "There's always been a big imbalance of power between workers and employers in [U.S.] agriculture," says Germino, noting that farm workers were initially excluded from minimum wage requirements. "So agricultural labor is one of the sectors where you see trafficking occurring the most. And [overseas], it's not going to be any different."

   The CIW is a worker-based human rights organization internationally recognized for its achievements in the fields of social responsibility, human trafficking, and gender-based violence at work.  Built on a foundation of farmworker community organizing, and reinforced with the creation of a national consumer network since 2000, CIW’s work has steadily grown over more than twenty five years to encompass three broad and overlapping spheres:

   1. The Fair Food Program

   2. The Campaign for Fair Food

   3. Anti-Slavery Program

   On any given day, the fruit and vegetables we eat or drink may have been picked by workers in involuntary servitude.  Men and women are held against their will by their employers through the use of violence – including beatings, shootings, and pistol-whippings – threats of violence, and coercion.

   The CIW’s Anti-Slavery Program has uncovered, investigated, and assisted in the prosecution of numerous multi-state, multi-worker farm slavery operations across the Southeastern U.S., helping liberate over 1,200 workers held against their will.  The U.S. Department of State credits the CIW with “pioneering” the worker-centered and multi-sectoral approach to prosecutions, and hails the CIW’s work on some of the earliest cases as the “spark” that ignited today’s national anti-slavery movement. 

   The CIW’s Fair Food Program (FFP) is a partnership among farmers, farmworkers, and retail food companies that ensures humane wages and working conditions for the workers who pick fruits and vegetables on participating farms. It harnesses the power of consumer demand to give farmworkers a voice in the decisions that affect their lives, and to eliminate the longstanding abuses that have plagued agriculture for generations.

   With the advent of the FFP, the CIW reached the goal of prevention. Rather than cleaning up  abuse after the fact. Worker education and monitoring backed by market consequences, enforceable zero tolerance resulted in FFP farms having zero cases of forced labor in a five-year period.   In a region and an industry with an uninterrupted 300-year history of forced labor, from chattel slavery to convict leasing, debt bondage, and modern-day slavery operations, this is a  remarkable transformation.  In three crops and seven states, the FFP is an undisputed success.    

   The FFP has been called “the best workplace-monitoring program” in the US by the New York Times, and “one of the great human rights success stories of our day” in the Washington Post.

   The CIW’s national Campaign for Fair Food (CFF) educates consumers on the issue of farm labor exploitation, its causes and solutions, and forges alliances between farmworkers and consumers in an effort to enlist the market power of major corporate buyers to help end that exploitation. Since 2001, farmworkers have partnered with people of faith, students, and communities all over the country to win respect for workers from some of the largest corporations in the world.

   The Campaign has combined creative, on-the-ground actions with cutting edge online organizing to win Fair Food Agreements with fourteen multi-billion dollar food retailers, including Walmart, Ahold USA, McDonald’s, Subway, and Compass Group, establishing more humane farm labor standards and fairer wages for farmworkers in their tomato suppliers’ operations. Alongside farmworkers and 90% of tomato growers, participating buyers are a key part of the Fair Food Program. Through the Program, these buyers support a wage increase through paying an additional penny per pound and require a human-rights-based Code of Conduct to be implemented on the farms that grow their tomatoes. Not only does the FFP make a substantial difference for workers’ wages, but it transforms the labor environment in Florida’s fields into a workplace rooted in mutual respect and basic dignity for farmworkers.

   With the four largest fast-food companies (McDonald’s, Yum Brands, Burger King, and Subway) and three largest food service providers (Compass Group, Aramark, and Sodexo) having signed Fair Food agreements with the CIW, the focus now falls squarely on the $550 billion supermarket industry and the final major players of the fast food industry.  In addition to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, who respectively joined the Program in 2008 and 2012, the CIW signed agreements with Walmart (2014), The Fresh Market (2015) and Ahold USA (2015).  It’s time now for the country’s other major grocery chains and final fast food hold-outs to sign up an join the movement (because if the continue not to do so what is it that they are saying about themselves? That they are pro-slavery and inhumane working conditions? Or they can’t afford the extra penny? We shall see).

   In total, the CIW’s work has gained national and international recognition, including the 2015 Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts in Combating Modern Day Slavery from President Obama, the 2010 Trafficking in Persons Hero Award from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2007 Anti-Slavery Award from Anti-Slavery International of London, a 2005 commendation from FBI Director Robert Mueller, and the 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award from the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights.

   Kumari Indunil, age 23, a trafficked domestic worker in Kuwait was forced to work as much as 20 hours a day with no free time off. When she asked her employer for time to rest, she was told, “You have come to work; you are like my shoes, and you have to work tirelessly.” Conditions declined and her employers refused to pay her salary and refused to return her to the employment agency in Kuwait. The employer’s husband began beating her and pulling her hair. “He went to the kitchen and took a knife and told me he would kill me, cut me up into little pieces, and put the little pieces of me into the cupboard.”

   A couple in Texas smuggled a 12-year-old girl from Mexico under the pretense of using her as a babysitter. She ended up becoming their domestic slave, deprived of school and having to sleep on the floor. The child was told she could not return to Mexico and was physically abused by the wife. Only after the local sheriff responded to a call involving a drug overdose was the child found and rescued. After pleading guilty, the couple were sentenced to 33 and 84 months in prison and ordered to pay $28,822 restitution to the victim.

  

   In another case, defendants running karaoke bars in Saipan worked with recruiters and brokers to bring Chinese women to the Northern Mariana Islands under the pretense of working in restaurants. Instead, the women were saddled with large debts, forced into prostitution, physically threatened, and subjected to violence. The two defendants were sentenced to 33 and 78 months in prison, and ordered to pay restitution of $22,200 and $25,200 to two victims, and fined an additional $55,000.

   Domestic servitude is the forced employment of someone as a maid or nanny, and victims are often migrant women who come from low-wage communities in their home countries. Domestic workers perform duties such as cleaning, cooking and childcare in their employers home. Domestic workers are often US citizens, undocumented workers or foreign nationals most commonly holding one of the following visa types: A-3, G-5, NATO-7 or B-1.

   The most common victims of this type of trafficking are women. Similar means of control to agricultural Work are common. Additionally, a lack of legislation regarding the duties and protection of these workers facilitates their exploitation. Employers commonly use the workers lack of knowledge of the language or legal system as a means of control and intimidation. This is also commonly paired with various forms of abuse and/or threats of passport revocation. Many domestic workers are brought to the United States on a promise of a better life or an education.    Traffickers are usually married couples from the same country of origin as the trafficked person, and are usually not involved in organized criminal networks, making it more difficult to identify instances of this type of trafficking. Perpetrators of domestic servitude are often well-respected members of their communities and lead otherwise normal lives. Areas with large middle-class and upper-middle-class populations are commonly the destinations of this type of trafficking.

   Legally employed domestic workers are distinct from illegally employed domestic servants. While legally employed domestic house workers are fairly compensated for their work in accordance with national wage laws, domestic servants are typically forced to work extremely long hours for little to no monetary compensation, and psychological and physical means are employed to limit their mobility and freedom. In addition, deportation threats are often used to discourage internationally trafficked persons from seeking assistance from authorities.

   It’s a testament to their salesmanship that in the time it took to consume one Waffle House meal in Columbus, Ohio, a table of door-to-door itinerant magazine sales crew members convinced their 25-year-old server, Johnathan Terrell Stewart, to quit his job in May of 2014, leave home without telling his family and join them on the road.

   A few weeks later, police in Maryland called Stewart’s grandmother to tell her that he had been found dead in a motel room. It was a heroin overdose, the family learned from the autopsy report they eventually received, but they know little else about what happened to him. Eight months later, police still won’t release any information about their investigation into his death. His body was shipped home shirtless, in jeans and tennis shoes; all of his belongings, including his wallet and cell phone, disappeared along with his crew, whose names remains unknown.

   When magazine crew workers become victims of tragic accidents or violent crimes, they’re often thousands of miles from home, which makes it difficult for their families to get information about their cases, which may often involve foul play. Since their door-to-door jobs are by nature itinerant, they roam the streets, trying to sell magazine subscriptions to the public in town after town.

   It is also a job that, many say, leaves crew members open to serious abuse. There is a long list of persistent mag crew-related problems, which usually generate only local news attention — disappearances, rapes, assaults, van rollover accidents, abandonments and suspicious deaths. Successful civil lawsuits against mag crew company owners haven’t done much to curb the industry’s labor abuses, and because of jurisdictional restrictions, local police in most states can do little other than arrest sales agents for selling without proper permits.

   On a personal note, while looking for employment when I was in my early twenties, I answered an ad to sell magazines in cities far away from Los Angeles, where I lived. I went to an interview and was met by an ordinary, unprepossessing  looking, middle-aged woman, sitting behind a folding table, in a small room. We spoke for a few minutes, her telling me what the job entailed, which was to join a sales team of other young people in cities far away from Los Angeles, and sell magazine subscriptions, all expenses paid (board, food, transportation, etc.). If I remember correctly I agreed to take the job, left, and never came back. I wasn’t keen on leaving L.A., and I thought the whole offer was slightly suspicious. I think it was that folding table that set off an alarm in my head. So I may have, and probably did, escape from a form of human slavery, which many others, unfortunately, have not.

   Traveling sales crews have the highest rate of calls to human trafficking hot lines after domestic labor (counting from January 2008 to February 2015). The mobile nature makes it easier for traffickers to control their victims' sleeping arrangements and food and to alienate them from outside contact. Traffickers may withhold food or threaten to abandon their victims in unfamiliar locations without money if they do not comply. Unlike other professions, members of traveling sales crews are considered independent contractors even if they do not have any autonomy in their life outside of work. As independent contractors, they are not overseen by several laws meant to prevent abuse, such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Victims often incur debt from their traffickers, and enter into a form of debt slavery.

   On March 26th, 2009, the state of Wisconsin passed Malinda's Traveling Sales Crew Protection Act (named after an 18 year old girl (Malinda Turvey) who was killed along with six other young kids while selling magazines door-to-door in Wisconsin on March 25th, 1999), which is a Wisconsin law that gives traveling sales crew members similar employment rights as part-time workers in Wisconsin which are currently guaranteed by state law. It also requires all crews to register with the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection before going door to door in state communities. By registering members of the crew, alerts for members with outstanding warrants in other states can be distributed and criminals identified and detained. It is the only law in the United States that regulates traveling sales crews. Wisconsin governor James E. Doyle said the intent of the law is to "stop companies from putting workers in dangerous and unfair conditions." The bill was passed in a form that applies only to sales workers who travel in groups of two or more. It was authored by Jon Erpenbach. Southwestern Advantage (a multi-level marketing company that recruits and trains college and university students as independent contractors to sell educational books, software, and website subscriptions door-to-door using direct selling methods) lobbied against the bill, arguing that their independent contractor business model nurtured the entrepreneurial spirit. During the hearings, former Southwestern student dealers testified on both sides of the issue, the result being Malinda's Traveling Sales Crew Protection Act' became active law on April 10th, 2010.

   Thomas Dale DeLay, a former Houston exterminator, whose hatred of E.P.A. pesticide regulations sparked his political career in 1978, became a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1985 until 2006. He was the Republican Party House Majority Leader from 2003 through 2005, until he stepped down as Speaker of the House after being  indicted on conspiracy charges by a grand jury in Travis County, Texas, on September 28th, 2005 (On April 3rd, 2006, three days after a former aide, Tony Rudy, pleaded guilty to various charges of corruption relating to the Jack Abramoff scandal, DeLay announced that he would withdraw from the 2006 race and not run for re-election, effective June 9th of that year).

   Jack Allan Abramoff is an American lobbyist, businessman, movie producer and writer. He was at the center of an extensive corruption investigation that led to his conviction, and to 21 other people either pleading guilty or being found guilty, including White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine other lobbyists and Congressional aides.

   The Northern Mariana Islands, officially the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), is an insular area and commonwealth of the United States consisting of 15 islands in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The CNMI includes all islands in the Mariana Archipelago except Guam which is the southernmost island of the chain and a separate U.S. territory. Along with Guam, it is the westernmost point (in terms of jurisdiction) and territory of the United States.

   The islands’ past exemption from U.S. labor laws led to many alleged incidents of exploitation, including claims of sweatshops, child labor, child prostitution, and forced abortions.  

   The following is from "Sex, Greed And Forced Abortions" written by Rebecca Clarren (May 9, 2006).

   A naked Mongolian woman in a blond wig grinds her body around a silver pole. As music pounds through the small room, disco lights reveal an overweight, graying man in a Hawaiian shirt sitting in the corner, rubbing the thighs of another of the club’s dancers.

   Outside this Saipan nightclub, scantily-clad Chinese girls, their hair dyed red or blond, sit on cheap white plastic chairs. “You want massage?” they call out to the Asian businessmen and U.S. Navy sailors who frequent the club.

   “I can get you lots of Chinese girls,” says a man with one long fingernail, who calls himself Free. “You can take a girl back to her room and do whatever you want to her. All night.”

   One would imagine that Tom DeLay, a right-wing Christian, would be appalled by the teeming red-light district of Saipan, the main island in the Micronesian chain of the Northern Marianas. Or Jack Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew. Yet these two men have been among the strongest supporters of an exploitative labor and immigration system on Saipan that has helped fuel not just this sex tourism, but work arrangements that are tantamount to indentured servitude.

   When asked about reports of forced prostitution and labor abuses, DeLay told the Galveston County Daily News in May 2005: “Sure, when you get this number of people, there are stories of sexual exploitation. But in interviewing these employees one-on-one, there was no evidence of any of that going on. No evidence of sweatshops as portrayed by the national media. It’s a beautiful island with beautiful people who are happy about what’s happening.”

   No evidence? DeLay’s support persisted even when a Department of Interior report documented that workers in Saipan’s garment factories were coerced into having unwanted abortions. The damage continues to this day, even though both men have been stripped of their power.

   The Northern Mariana Islands are a U.S. territory, and thus subject to most U.S. laws. But the 30,000 “guest workers” there—predominately women from China, the Philippines, and Thailand who sew clothing for top-name American brands, which are then allowed to label them “Made in Saipan (USA),” “Made in Northern Mariana Islands (USA)," or simply “Made in USA”—are not covered by U.S. minimum-wage and immigration laws.

   At its peak, the factories in the Northern Marianas annually exported garments worth $2 billion retail to the U.S. Considering that the success of the industry was tied closely to its low wages and exploitative guest worker program—and the fact that it was exempt from tariffs or quotas on exports to the U.S. mainland—it’s not surprising that both the Marianas’ government and the garment manufacturers have fought long and hard to maintain the deal.

   So they hired Jack Abramoff, the formerly high-flying Republican lobbyist. First at the Washington, D.C., law offices of Preston, Gates, Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds and later at Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff and his team brought in nearly $11 million in fees from the Northern Marianas government and Saipan garment manufacturers to block Congressional efforts to raise the minimum wage and eliminate the islands’ exemptions from U.S. immigration laws. His efforts focused on the House Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over U.S. territories. And he also cultivated powerful allies in the House leadership—notably Tom DeLay, who, as majority whip at the time, could keep a bill off the House floor even if the Resources Committee voted in its favor.

   One of Abramoff’s favorite tactics for influencing Congress was to arrange Saipan junkets for members of Congress and their staffers. As many as 100 people connected to the U.S. Congress—members themselves or their staffers—traveled to the islands. Among the islands’ visitors were DeLay, his wife and daughter and six of his aides. DeLay would later tell The Washington Post: “[The islands are] a perfect petri dish of capitalism.”

   Meanwhile, the garment industry on Saipan has begun to decline with the expiration of worldwide quotas on apparel exports to the United States. Garment makers are moving off Saipan to even lower-wage countries such as China, Vietnam and Cambodia. Desperate to earn money and pay back their recruitment fees, some unemployed garment workers have found themselves turning to another lucrative industry on Saipan: sex tourism. There are no reliable statistics, but an estimated 90 percent of the island’s prostitutes are former garment workers.

   When Ms. contacted DeLay during its investigation, his spokesman Michael Connolly said, “He stands by the things he has said in the past and he stands by the votes he’s made that pertain to the islands.”

   Rep. George Miller, D.-Calif., who has championed efforts to raise the minimum wage in Saipan, hopes that the recent indictment of Abramoff offers a chance for real change in the Marianas. He has requested that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the House Resources Committee chair, Richard Pombo, R.-Calif., launch a full investigation of Abramoff’s dealings in the Marianas.

    “It’s so ironic that people who talk about themselves as having family values are allowing these guest workers to be exploited in the harshest possible ways,” says Miller. “Their money and lobbying allowed the continuation of the worst of human behavior.

   Since leaving Congress, along with tending to his legal troubles, Tom DeLay has co-authored (with Stephen Mansfield) a political memoir, “No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight,” given media interviews (primarily regarding politics), begun a personal blog, opened an official Facebook page (written in the third-person), become active on Twitter (written in the first-person), and appeared on the ninth season of “Dancing with the Stars,” the highly watched ABC television reality show.

   Jack Abramoff returned to lobbying since his release from prison, having attempted to arrange meetings between then President-elect Donald Trump and foreign leaders. He is registered as a lobbyist. He now speaks out against Washington, D.C. corruption and the Lobbying community.

   Have labor conditions improved since the abuses mentioned above were brought to light to the mainland American public and federal legislators?

   Unfortunately, they have not. As a matter of fact, under the Trump administration they have gotten worse.

   From a report by David North on July 30th, 2018 for the Center for Immigration Studies:

   The federal government — as it has for decades — has once again made the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, just North of Guam, a really cushy place for the employers of foreign workers.

   Congress and the president have decided that the old foreign worker ceiling of 4,999 was too low, and that it should be more than doubled to 13,000. The ceiling is just for those with the CNMI-only work permit; there are also a handful of workers in the islands with federal permits, such as H-1B. Aliens on the CW-1 visas have no path to citizenship, and are thus without any political influence, as we have reported earlier.

   The labor market in the Marianas is what one would expect in an environment where the employers have all the political power, and the workers none. Wages in the private sector are kept low, unions are non-existent, and violations of the labor laws are all too common. Most of the indigenous population prefers to work for the undemanding, and over-staffed, commonwealth government.

   The employers control the local government, the islands' non-voting delegate in the U.S. House of Representative goes along with them, and the Department of Homeland Security, in this and previous administrations, always sees it the employers' way.

   The legislation exploding the alien worker ceiling wound its way through Congress and a presidential signature very quietly, and I missed it completely until USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) issued a press release about the new law.

   That bit of legislation contains a useful new element, a $50 per worker anti-fraud fee to be paid by the employers. If the ceiling is met, that will give DHS $650,000; hopefully the department will use it to send a couple of sharp investigators to the islands, people not yet captured by the islands' power structure.

   The CNMI has once again been tagged “destination and transit location for men, women, and children, subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking,” based on the U.S. State Department’s newly released 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report. -saipantribune.com Feb 27, 2017

   In the United States v. Kil Soo Lee, Lee was the director of Daewoosa, Ltd., a garment factory located in American Samoa. Lee recruited internationally for his workers, targeting Vietnam, China and Samoa. The workers were required to pay $3,600 to $8,000 to be hired plus an additional $5,000 if not completed. When they arrived, Lee retained their passports. The living conditions were highly controlled, including a curfew. Complaining about the conditions resulted in punishment: lack of food, physical abuse, detainment or deportation. The United States Department of Labor (DOL) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) began, in May of 1999, an investigation on Lee, eventually reimbursing many unpaid workers. The day the back payments were made, Lee demanded the workers sign the checks over to him, which he placed in his personal account.

   The garment industry is particularly susceptible to labor trafficking in part because of a highly immigrant work force, low profit margins, and a tiered production system. The production of garments is often divided into several parts. Major retailers will often subcontract work to different companies, which will subcontract to other smaller companies. The limited number of contracts will often go to the cheapest subcontractor. The largest cost is often human labor, so subcontractors that pay their employees the least are often the ones that get the contracts. Because of the tiered nature, it is difficult to regulate and there is little incentive to verify that subcontractors are obeying the law. Coupled with a worker population that is vulnerable because of their visa status and unfamiliarity with American laws, this creates a system that is ripe for human trafficking.

   In the El Monte Thai Garment Slavery Case, 72 Thai nationals were discovered working and living in an apartment complex ringed with barbed wire and spiked fences, sewing clothes for major retailers and manufacturers in El Monte, California. Some of the captives had been held for as long as seven years by the leader of a human trafficking ring, "Auntie Suni." The play “Fabric” was based on the events of the case.

   A forced marriage is a marriage where one or both participants are married without their freely given consent. Servile marriage is defined as a marriage involving a person being sold, transferred or inherited into a marriage. According to End Child Prostitution and Trafficking (ECPAT) (a global network of civil society organizations that works to end the sexual exploitation of children. It focuses on halting the online sexual exploitation of children, the trafficking of children for sexual purposes and the sexual exploitation of children in the travel and tourism industry), "Child trafficking for forced marriage is simply another manifestation of trafficking and is not restricted to particular nationalities or countries."

   A forced marriage qualifies as a form of human trafficking in certain situations. If a woman is sent abroad, forced into the marriage and then repeatedly compelled to engage in sexual conduct with her new husband, then her experience is that of sex trafficking. If the bride is treated as a domestic servant by her new husband and/or his family, then this is a form of labor trafficking.

   The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) is a charity campaigning and working in child protection in the United Kingdom and the Channel Islands.

   According to case studies released by the charity, one 17-year-old girl told counselors: “I got forced to marry last year. I never wanted any of this. My friends are being supportive, but I can’t talk to my mum about it as she thinks he’s the best thing for me and told me that if I end the marriage, she won’t speak to me ever again. I’ve never even met him.”

   One 18-year-old girl told the NSPCC: “My parents are talking about taking me back to my home country to get married, but I don’t want to. They get violent when I don’t do what they want. I want to leave home but they’d never agree to it. I just want to live a normal teenage life, but they won’t let me.”

   Figures from the leading children’s charity show the number of counseling sessions it has provided for youngsters has trebled in five years.

   Children face violence, bullying and threats from adults pressing them to marry someone they do not want to and, in some cases, have never met.

   The NSPCC’s chief executive, Peter Wanless, said: “This is a crime and an abuse of human rights. Forcing a child to marry shows a complete lack of regard for their feelings, thoughts or ambitions.

   “We understand some may worry about betraying their family, but we would urge anyone, including potential victims, to speak up before it is too late. Help us break the cycle and speak up, so that we can step in and stop a child being bound into something that they would never ask for.”

  

   Maria grew up in the countryside of an eastern European country. She was the product of an alcoholic father who constantly beat his children. Poorly educated, Maria was sold to an unknown man by her sister when she was only 13 years old. She was taken by boat to Italy and there was sold again to another man who raped and beat her. The police rescued Maria and she was eventually returned to her family, only to be sold four days later -- this time by her father. Again she was taken to Italy, imprisoned for seven months and made to drink vinegar (as a form of punishment). After being smuggled into the United Kingdom, she was forced to work for five years as a prostitute, seeing 65 to 70 customers a day. Maria, 24 years old, has been “raped, beaten, sold, cut with knives, and threatened.” She was finally able to escape and went to the police who brought her to a shelter. “My traffickers threatened to kill me, and they threatened to take my sister too and do the same to her.... I was beaten often, very badly. I have scars from it now, especially from my broken arm. I have been raped many times.... I will never forget what they did to me.”

   Lucy Kabanya, 39, left Kenya for Germany in July of 2006 for a three-month holiday to join her German boyfriend in Frankfurt. Lucy, who was introduced to the man through a friend, began communicating  with him through e-mail early in 2005; in 2006, he came to Kenya to meet her. When he came to Kenya they stayed together in a hotel for a month before he returned to Germany. He promised to send her an airline ticket to go on holiday and visit him. Before she traveled to Germany, her “boyfriend” sent her gifts and money. “Before I left Kenya, my host had treated me so well; he had lavished me with gifts of all kinds, sent me money whenever I asked for cash. He promised a life I had never seen before.”

   Upon her arrival in Germany, instead of a vacation, Lucy had her travel documents confiscated and she was denied food for several days before her “boyfriend” informed her that she would be working as a prostitute. She was raped, viciously beaten, and threatened with death.

   Lucy was one of the lucky ones. Although she had been kept incommunicado, denied a telephone, and refused permission to talk to strangers, she was able to convince her captor to allow her to call relatives to inform them that she was alright. Instead, she called a friend who gave her the number of the German police hot line. She was immediately rescued and taken to a  hospital, a safe-house, and then to Solwodi, an NGO that provided victim assistance.

   The manager of the Kenya branch of German-based Solwodi, said, “We have received more that 25 women who have been returned to Kenya from Europe after falling prey to international crooks who took them there as their boyfriends before they turned them into sex slaves.”

   Coco was kidnaped in Mexico and taken to Canada after her husband double-crossed the men he worked with as a drug money courier. “At the beginning, they wanted all the information about money, properties, bank accounts, and everything that my husband stole from them.” The drug dealers soon altered their plans. Coco was beaten, locked up, and forced to perform sex acts for money. Within three months of working as a prostitute she got pregnant. Her captors took her to a doctor for an abortion. Instead, the doctor helped her escape.

   Min came to Southern California from the Fujian province in China. She had dropped out of school in the 9th grade but had worked hard all her life. Her husband had always gambled and now had more debts than they could pay, so she came to visit a friend in the United States and look for work. She found an online ad for women to work as massage therapists near Los Angeles and was promised $6,000 a month with free housing.

   She took a bus to the location on the ad and was met by a driver. Min showed the driver the name of the business and the address she had been given. The driver then drove for some time to an apartment where two other women were staying. In the morning, a second driver came to pick everyone up to take them to the massage parlor. On her first day, Min was told that in order to earn the money she had promised her family, she would have to engage in commercial sex.

   Min had no idea where she was or how to contact the first driver to get back to the bus station. Min stayed and when she was able, told her family everything was fine. Min was deeply ashamed this had happened and never wanted them to find out. Whenever she came close to asking a customer for help, her manager would threaten to call the police, who she said would deport her and tell her family how shameful she had been. Every few weeks, Min would be moved to a new apartment and new business. All she knew was that she was still somewhere near Los Angeles.

   Eventually, she wound up in a business that police were targeting. When they came to shut it down, they arrested the traffickers, not Min. The police then told Min she was actually in Illinois, nowhere near LA. The police helped connect Min with service providers in Illinois and then California. The service providers helped Min understand her rights and helped her enroll in English classes. Min is in the process of receiving a visa specifically for victims of trafficking, the T visa.

   Last year in Orange County, California, four Vietnamese women filed a lawsuit against their former employers, the owners of Tustin Nail Spa, for violations of several labor laws, including wage and hour violation. Just three years ago, state officials had fined the same salon $28,000, citing similar offenses.

   “Even though we smiled and seemed happy in front of customers, the truth was that we were quietly suffering,” said Jenny Hoang, a plaintiff who worked at Tustin Nail Spa for nearly a decade. “We did not fight back because we were grateful to have jobs as refugees who do not speak a lot of English, and we wanted to provide for our family and children.” It is extremely common for workers to feel too intimidated to pursue legal recourse and justice in the face of labor violations. Their income and livelihoods are at stake. “The fear of retaliation is a huge issue since the community is relatively insular, and so news of a ‘troublemaker’ worker can easily get around to other owners,” said Trang.  And since nearly every Vietnamese non-citizen in America escaped the Communist regime or is directly related to someone who did, they grew up with little faith in the legal system. “Many Vietnamese people carry that skepticism about the legal system and laws to America.”

   The above may seem like a simple labor dispute, but in legal working conditions in the United States fear of retribution and being deported is not used to intimidate laborers. This is a form of coercion, and one of the definitions of trafficking.

   In many circumstances, perhaps most, the situation can turn most dire.

   Many of these young women have fled poverty and unimaginable horrors. Because of no money and no alternatives, they are funneled into nail salons, not out of a passion to do nails, but to pay back their trafficker and make good money for those who hold power over them. Many don’t make a living wage, and yet, they send more money home to support their families in Vietnam than they keep for themselves. Many are also forced to work at night as prostitutes or drug farmers, and it’s not uncommon for 10 or more to live together in the same room.

   Labor trafficking within the restaurant and food industry has been documented in nearly all kinds of food service and may involve bars, clubs, buffets, taquerias, or food and ice cream trucks. People working as cooks, bus staff, and wait staff may be exploited, with traffickers often taking advantage of language barriers between exploited workers and patrons to help avoid detection.

   With this type, it can be difficult for even survivors to decipher who their primary trafficker is since the links between the smugglers, recruiters, and restaurant management are sometimes unclear and may be deliberately obfuscated by the trafficker to help avoid detection.

   Myanmar has joined China, Syria and South Sudan as being among the countries doing least to tackle human trafficking, according to the US State Department's latest annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report (6-28-2018).

   The US report specifically cited the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis as the reason for downgrading Myanmar to Tier 3, the bottom rung of the TIP scale, which rates the best performing countries at Tier 1.

   The report said Myanmar's military operations in northwestern Rakhine State had "dislocated hundreds of thousands of Rohingya and members of other ethnic groups, many of whom were subjected to exploitation in (Myanmar), Bangladesh, and elsewhere in the region as a result of their displacement."

    At least 700,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine State since last year, mainly into neighboring Bangladesh, after the Myanmar military launched clearance operations the government claims were targeting terrorist groups. The US and UN human rights chief have since described the operations as "ethnic cleansing."

   Many of those fleeing "were subjected to exploitation -- or transported to other countries for the purpose of sex trafficking -- as a result of their displacement," the US State Department report said, adding that refugees were also vulnerable to "forced labor" in jade mines and other industries [including the use of child soldiers]. -James Griffiths, CNN

   A U.S. State Department report on human trafficking warned on June 28th, 2018, that removing children from their families made them easy targets for traffickers, raising questions about the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children and parents illegally crossing the U.S-Mexico border.

   As mentioned above the annual TIP report looked at 187 countries and territories and ranked them into four tiers. In a special section, the State Department said children should only be removed from their families as a “temporary, last resort.”

   John Sifton, an advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said the report “is an indictment of the Trump administration’s own policies with respect to asylum seekers and others seeking entry into the United States.”

   Since April, more than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents as a result of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy for illegal immigrants. Children were kept in shelters while their parents waited to have their cases heard by a judge.

   Faced with criticism at home and abroad, Trump signed an executive order on June 20 requiring families be detained together for the duration of legal proceedings, but many could remain apart as legal challenges drag on.

   A senior State Department official said the United States has screening standards for trafficking indicators when children cross the border unaccompanied or are separated from their parents.

   Trafficking indicators can include children who eat apart from family members, travel unaccompanied by adults and children who have no time for playing, according to the United Nations. -Daphne Psaledakis, Reuters

   Senate Bill 1693, commonly referred to as SESTA/FOSTA, is a new federal law aimed at curbing sex trafficking by holding online platforms accountable for the content their users post. And since the legal definition of sex trafficking is consistently conflated with consensual adult sex work, several websites that advertised in-person adult entertainment services have shut down, or began blocking access from the United States.

   But instead of helping reduce exploitation, say sex trafficking survivors and advocates, taking away their ability to use the Internet has actually increased the risks facing their community, and crippled efforts for harm reduction. Moreover, they say the law does not address issues that truly contribute to trafficking: homelessness, poverty and a broken foster care system. Instead, SESTA/FOSTA drastically limits the tools available to those who survive in the sex trade, pushing workers further underground, into the streets and the dark web, where they are easier targets for those who aim to exploit the vulnerable.

   "This was unlike anything we'd ever seen," says Meg Munoz, a sex-trafficking survivor and founder of the OC Umbrella Collective, an organization that serves sex workers and those being domestically trafficked in Southern California. "The immediate impact was swift and, honestly, terrifying. We watched people literally walk back to their pimps knowing they had lost any bit of autonomy they had. We watched people wind up homeless overnight. We watched members of our community disappear."

   SESTA/FOSTA was signed into law just days after the FBI seized Backpage.com, one of the largest and most affordable online platforms available for sex workers to advertise and screen clients. Platforms such as Backpage, and the dozens of similar sites that shuttered in response to the new law were also an important tool for those who serve victims of trafficking.

   "Every client I have ever worked with has had ads associated with online websites, the majority being Backpage," says Jamie Walton, a survivor of childhood sex trafficking and founder of the Wayne Foundation, an organization in South Florida that provides direct services to young people victimized by exploitation. "Those ads are forms of evidence. Those ads are ways that we were able to find children who were missing. Now, all that information has been driven to places online that are difficult to search, making the work almost impossible."

   Those who aim to traffic minors however, still have ample access to platforms that children use, such as Facebook. "Traffickers targeting children are using Facebook as a way to engage with potential victims," Walton says. "I've worked several cases where the original point of contact was through their site." While the monolithic social media platform actively and publicly supported the bill, Walton says Facebook continues to be a place where pimps and predators can have easy access to potential victims.

   "Recently, screenshots of people being approached by pimps trying to recruit them via Facebook message have been circulating. The same goes for Twitter. This was not as common before SESTA," says Munoz. The national organization of the Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP USA) confirmed that they have received a number of reports and screenshots from their members who have been contacted by pimps and other predators via social media in the past months.

   Facebook and Twitter both responded promptly when asked for comment on these allegations, firmly reiterating their commitment to ensuring trafficking, abuse and exploitation have no place on their platforms, and pointing to the systems and policies they currently have in place to protect minors from being victimized on their site through reporting and cooperation with law enforcement.

   Our ally, Saudi Arabia has reportedly recruited children from Darfur (a region in western Sudan which has been in the throes of a civil war since February 26th, 2003) to join its military campaign in Yemen.

   The New York Times reports that as many as 14,000 Sudanese militiamen have been fighting for the Saudi-led coalition over the last four years.

   Almost all of those fighters come from Darfur, which has its own civil war resulting in 300,000 deaths so far and 1.2 million people displaced.

   Many of the militiamen helping the Saudi-led coalition belong to the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces, who were blamed for the systematic raping of women and girls and indiscriminate killing during the conflict in Darfur, states the Times.

   According to fighters that the Times interviewed, the Sudanese were used on the front lines of the conflict. Five fighters who returned from Yemen told the Times that children made up at least 20 percent of their units. Two said children made up more than double that percentage.

   Saudi Arabia reportedly offers pay that many Sudanese cannot decline.

   “People are desperate. They are fighting in Yemen because they know that in Sudan they don’t have a future,” Hafiz Ismail Mohamed, a former banker, economic consultant and critic of the government, told the Times.

   “We are exporting soldiers to fight like they are a commodity we are exchanging for foreign currency.”

   The Saudi-led war in Yemen has been called the world's worst humanitarian crisis by the United Nations. As many as 12 million people in the country are near starvation because of blockades, according to human rights groups.

    “The Saudis told us what to do through the telephones and devices,” Mohamed Suleiman al-Fadil, a 28-year-old member of the Bani Hussein tribe who returned from Yemen at the end of last year, told the newspaper. “They never fought with us.”

   “The Saudis would give us a phone call and then pull back,” added Ahmed, a 25-year-old member of the Awlad Zeid tribe. “They treat the Sudanese like their firewood.”

   Sudan has a young population with 41% of its total population under the age of 15. 20% of Sudanese people are 15 to 24 years old. The age of consent in Sudan is 18, which correlates

with the age of the majority which separates children from adults. therefore individuals under the age of 18 who are “recruited” to participate in military activities, willingly or not, are legally unable to make this decision on their own. Thus individuals under the age of 18 recruited to fight in Yemen can be considered a form of human trafficking.

   Last December 13th the U.S. Senate voted to end American support for the conflict in Yemen, although the House will have to approve such a move this year.

   The Senate had supported aiding Saudi military operations earlier in 2018, but changed their position following the outcry over the death of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

   President Trump has maintained that he would stand by the Saudi government, despite reports that U.S. intelligence has linked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Khashoggi's killing inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul last October.

  

   Polaris was founded with the name Polaris Project in 2002, by Derek Ellerman and Katherine Chon, who were seniors at Brown University, when they were inspired to create a nonprofit organization that focuses on ending human trafficking and modern-day slavery. The inspiration came to them after learning about a forced labor criminal case which exposed how six South Korean women were forced to work at a brothel in Providence, Rhode Island.

  

   Polaris is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that works to combat and prevent modern-day slavery and human trafficking. For the past 10 years, Polaris has run the National Human Trafficking Hotline, working on some 40,000 cases of trafficking. From that work, the organization has built one of the largest data sets on human trafficking in the United States. Based on this data set, in 2017 Polaris released The Typology of Modern Slavery, which classified human trafficking in the United States into 25 distinct businesses. The data set is publicly available for use by researchers through the Counter-Trafficking Data Collaborative, launched by Polaris and U.N. International Organization for Migration.  Polaris also advocates for stronger state and federal anti-trafficking legislation, and engages community members in local and national grassroots efforts. Polaris has been criticized for releasing false and misleading data regarding sex trafficking. Critics of Polaris state that the organization fails to distinguish between consensual sex work and coercion, and that the policies Polaris lobbies for harm sex workers.

   The organization was named after the North Star, which people living in slavery in the Southern United States used to help find their way along the Underground Railroad to freedom in the North.

   The organization is committed to ending human trafficking and slavery and focuses its efforts in the United States. Polaris is one of the few organizations working on all forms of trafficking, including supporting survivors who are male, female, transgender people and children, US citizens and foreign nationals and survivors of both labor and sex trafficking.

   Since 2007, the National Human Trafficking Hotline (1-888-373-7888), has been in operation. It is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Administration for Children and Families and through non-governmental sources. The National Hotline provides survivors of human trafficking with support and a variety of options to get help and stay safe, and shares actionable tips and expertise with the anti-trafficking community. It is staffed 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Assistance is available in more than 200 languages.

   In 2018, the National Hotline announced expanded modes of communications. Now survivors and others can contact the service using BeFree SMS Textline (233733) and online chat services in both English and Spanish. Chat is available at humantraffickinghotline.org.

   The number of human trafficking cases reported to the National Hotline has increased significantly every year since its inception. More than 7,600 cases were reported in 2016, over 8,700 in 2017, and it is projected to surpass 2017's number by 10 to 20 percent last year. All calls are kept confidential unless a caller consents to being connected to law enforcement or a social service provider, or if the caller reports a situation of imminent danger.

   Accurate statistics are hard to come by, but according to the ILO, forced labor alone generates an estimated $150 billion in profits per annum as of 2014. Again, trafficking in humans is the second most profitable illegal enterprise on the planet, with drug trafficking being the first. One has to remember though when drugs are gone they’re gone. People on the other hand, can be used over and over again.

   As long a greed persists in our societies the monsters will continue to roam and wreck havoc upon the world.

To be continued

A message from Polaris:

January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month. Understanding the true nature of human trafficking is the first step to combating it. Human trafficking Hollywood-style looks a lot like kidnapping in a foreign country. The reality though is far more complicated. It is the woman who came to work in the home of a diplomat forced to work for no pay, the migrant worker refused food or water and trapped in debt, and the young woman coerced by her boyfriend to provide sex for money. In order to prevent human trafficking we have to know what it really looks like. Help us spread awareness, by educating friends and family on this terrible crime. The fight to end human trafficking begins with you.

Addendum: 1-23-19: Nigeria Finds More Than 20,000 Kidnapped Girls in Mali