Human trafficking: causes, impacts, and prevention strategies

Human Trafficking (a Global and a National Problem)

Smuggling and Trafficking

Trafficking and Sex Tourism

Trafficking and Forced Labor

Human Trafficking (Profile of Victims )

The Problem of Arizona

Police Response to Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is an epidemic problem affecting millions of people around the world. Poverty, globalization and the promise of higher standards of living drive countless young people to move outside their country, often through illegal channels, only to find themselves end up as hapless victims of human trafficking. Collaboration is the key to successful dismantling of the multinational human trafficking network. While active measures by police, proactive citizens and human rights organizations have saved many victims from the perpetrators of these horrific crimes, effectively destroying the human trafficking syndicate would necessitate a more ground level approach, one that addresses the important factors that contribute to the demands of the market. Eradicating the drug market, destroying the drug cartels, developing programs for destitute children and women, addressing poverty and other social initiatives have to be vigorously pursued. An all round effort including social, political and law enforcement policies and practices are needed for the successful dismantling of the global human trafficking menace.

Introduction

Human trafficking is a global problem that affects millions of people around the world. It is one of the worst crimes as it affects not only the trafficked person but also the family members who are left miserable and totally clueless of the whereabouts of the missing person. It also happens to be one of the most profitable crimes in the world falling next only to drug trafficking and weapons smuggling. [ELDR, 2006] it is estimated that the global human trafficking industry nets a profit of 32 billion per year. [Polaris Project, 2007] as per the 2007 'Trafficking in Persons report' released by the U.S. government, the numbers are high and range from anywhere between 4 and 27 million people throughout the world. Human trafficking is a multi-dimensional problem, one that promotes organized crime, one that totally destroys the human rights of a person, and one that carries serious health risk consequences. Statistics indicate that as much as 80% of transnationally trafficked people are women and as much as 70% of them are forced into commercial sex trade while 30% are forced into manual labor. [Polaris Project, 2007]

The harrowing fact is that as much as 1 million children are victims to the global commercial sex industry. The problem is universal and according to the recent UN report, as many as 162 countries are affected by human trafficking. [Polaris Project, 2007] Even in the U.S., where human right violations are a serious crime, the deplorable fact is that human trafficking continues to be a major problem and as much as 17,500 people are trafficked into the country to be forced into sex trade and slave labor. [ALERT, 2009] These are grim facts and while the law enforcement force across the country use different tactics including surveillance, undercover agents and confidential informants to uncover this covert crime, human trafficking continues to be a major issue in the U.S.A brief overview of the human trafficking and the strategies that the police use to counter and destroy the human trafficking network will provide better insight into the topic.

Human Trafficking (a Global and a National Problem)

As the sober statistics mentioned above indicate, human trafficking is a well-formed and profitable global network. It is not just a problem of the underdeveloped or the developing world but also an issue that confronts developed nations in the world. In fact, the U.S., widely known as an epitome of democracy and its strict laws on human rights continues to be one of the biggest destinations of human trafficking. Human trafficking for sex trade and labor trade is very much a prevalent issue across the country. As Lois Shelley, the director and the founder of Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center in Washington puts it, "This is important because we are the only advanced democracy in the world that has the preponderance of its victims be its own citizens and have it be youth. And this is something that we're not paying enough attention to. We have an enormous problem of victimization in our country, and a vulnerability, and we're not talking enough about it, and we're not doing enough about it.." [RFERL, 2008] This happens to be a highly secretive as well as profitable trade and the traffickers come from a wide range of social backgrounds from organized crime gangs to diplomats and executives. A case in point is the recent finding about two Uzbek professors residing in Texas who exploited two Uzbek girls and managed to make $400,000 in just 18 months. [RFERL, 2008]

Smuggling and Trafficking

The U.S. is an attractive destination for people from many countries. The promise of living in an advanced economy drives many people, particularly from the bordering countries such as Mexico to smuggle into the U.S. Smuggling, is the willful consent of the person who pays money to somehow enter into the U.S. soil. Trafficking on the other hand involves involuntary and forced exploitation wherein the victim is transported across from one place to another and forced to endure horrible conditions often involving sexual exploitation and forced labor. The tightening up of the U.S. border post September 11 has driven many people to prefer the underground route of entry into the country and this has made them increasingly vulnerable to the exploitation of the traffickers. As per a recent CIA report, " between 45,000 to 50,000 women and children are brought to the United States every year under false pretenses and are forced to work as prostitutes, abused laborers or servants." [NAFI, 2007]

Trafficking and Sex Tourism

Increasingly young women and children from economically deprived countries are abducted and engaged in sex business without their consent. Mexico is one of the most affected countries in the human trafficking issue. The powerful drug cartels across the country and the vulnerable population of Mexicans who are willing to risk entering and working in the U.S. have made the country a major source of human trafficking victims. Central American countries and Asian countries are important destinations for sex tourism for clients from U.S. And Canada. The intra-regional trafficking of children and women in Mexico who are forced into these commercial sex industry for serving tourists from the U.S. And Canada has literally blown out of proportions making the country one of the worst affected by human trafficking and human rights violation. "According to a study by Richard Estes more than 16,000 children in Mexico are engaged in prostitution in just seven Mexican cities. Many of these children are victims of national and intra-regional trafficking from poorer countries located in Central and South America, including Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala." [NAFI, 2007, pg5] Although the destination for most of these trafficked children is the U.S., many of them end up in Mexico as the widespread police corruption and poor law enforcement practices in the country make it easier to run the sex business. Armed with economic power and weapon power the Mexican drug lords easily overwhelm the local police and make substantial profits from running pornography and sex businesses catering to local as well as foreign clients. [NAFI, 2007, pg 5]

Trafficking and Forced Labor

People from as many as thirty five (and more) countries are engaged in forced labor across the cities in the country. Studies indicate that Chinese constitute the main victims of forced labor in the U.S. Mexicans and Vietnamese are the next in line with thousands of people being forced to do labor against their consent. Reports indicate that forced labor is in operation in more than 90 cities across the U.S. And the problem is more prevalent in big U.S. cities with a large immigrant population. States such as California, Texas, NY and Florida are identified as major destinations of human trafficking for forced labor. In the U.S., 46% of these trafficked victims are forced into sexual trade, 27% into domestic services, 10% into agriculture and 5% in sweatshops. [NAFI, 2007, pg 7] the U.S. also happens to be one of the important destinations of smuggled children. Since adoption laws are much stricter and adoption usually involves a long waiting time, many couples in the U.S. are willing to adopt trafficked children circumventing the long and dragging legal adoption process. This in turn increases the demand for children and more and more are trafficked from foreign lands making the U.S. one of the important destinations for child trafficking from across the world. Mexico happens to be the number one source for children. [NAFI, 2007]

Human Trafficking (Profile of Victims )

In the U.S., the majority of victims of human trafficking happen to be females aged between 12 and 18. Most of them hail from ethnic minorities and have little or no education. Children from economically deprived backgrounds are particularly vulnerable to trafficking for purpose of sex tourism. In general, minorities, displaced people and migrants are the most at risk for human trafficking. [NAFI, 2007, pg 8] on the other hand there are many adult women who unfortunately end up as forced laborers. These people happen to be victims of false promises who were lured with the idea of well paid jobs and a higher standard of living. The traffickers often employ psychological tactics in forcing their victims to submission. Routinely the travel and identification documents of the victims are seized and they are threatened with dire consequences for their family members back home if they attempted escape or to inform the local police. Many of these victims end up in brothels, massage parlors, domestic services or forced into factory labor. [ICE, 2010] the victims are often physically abused, injected with drugs and suffer from a high risk for HIV and other sexual infections.

The Problem of Arizona

Arizona, being a border city happens to be the hub of not only illegal immigration operations but also of organized human trafficking. Thousands of people from Mexico and other Central American countries are smuggled into the U.S. And coerced into prostitution and forced labor. As U.S. Attorney Dennis K. Burke said recently, "It occurs largely in the shadows,." The victims do not come forward to the law enforcement officials for fear of retribution. Officer Kevin Jeter, a special agent who is in charge of the ICE investigations in the Yuma region of south western Arizona says, "Running illicit prostitution rings disguised as massage parlors is a common tactic used by human-trafficking organizations," [Daniel Gonzalez, 2010]. Based on the U.S. bureau of justice statistics, in the 21 months from Jan 2007, the State of Arizona has witnessed 1,229 incidents of human trafficking with more than 80% of the cases being forced into commercial sex trade. Back in 2003, the U.S. department of Justice funded the formation of Arizona League to End Regional Trafficking (ALERT), a coalition network between the law enforcement agencies, NGO organizations, social service agencies and dutiful citizens in an all out effort to end the miseries of human trafficking victims in the state. This initiative was developed to encourage more active partnerships with the various organizations and to encourage pro-active reporting by the public and to provide direct support services to victims of human trafficking in the State.[ALERT]

The passing of the new immigration bill SB 1070 in Arizona has however, created more concern among human rights defenders. Under this bill, all illegal immigrants can now be imprisoned. Many worry that this new bill may in fact increase human trafficking as victims may no longer wish to come forward to the law enforcement agencies to report their circumstances for fear of being arrested and deported. Since these victims no longer are in possession of their travel documents, and in most cases are likely to have expired status, they will be less inclined to report their misery to police. That is to say that under this bill all human trafficking victims could possibly be considered as criminals. As a UNICEF survey reported, "trafficking is not declining at all, but has simply become less visible, with victims unwilling to seek assistance for fear of repatriation, deportation and stigmatisation." [UNICEF] This new bill by the Arizona government is thought of as a negative step that strengthens the hold of the drug cartels and other organized crime networks across the Mexican border as it hinders the innocent victims from seeking help. The bill will also affect undocumented immigrant workers who are subjected to domestic violence from seeking legal help. [Amanda Kloer, 2010]

Police Response to Human Trafficking

Though the levels of Human trafficking continues to surge, swift and well planned police response has burst many a human trafficking network across the country and released many young girls and women from bonded labor and forced sex trade. The Immigration and Customs enforcement officers are the main players in controlling human trafficking operations. As Erik Breitzke, the head of the ICE's Human Smuggling and Trafficking Unit says, "One of the most disturbing trends in recent years has been the increasing sophistication of criminal networks when it comes to trafficking in human beings. This requires a sophisticated law enforcement response, and no other agency has ICE's combined authorities for enforcing immigration and customs laws, which gives us a set of powerful tools for attacking these organizations" [ICE] .

Once the police receive a tip of a sex trade, detectives are immediately pressed into detailed surveillance operations. Once the surveillance operations confirm the suspicion, police officers then employ undercover agents to get an inside view of the gang operation. One of the recent successful undercover operations in human trafficking was 'Operation Guardian Angel'. 'Guardian Angel' was a joint operation by the Human Trafficking Rescue Project, a joint task force from the Independence Police Department, the FBI, ICE, and the Kansas City, Mo., Police Department. This operation was initiated in response to the growing child prostitution network in Kansas city. As mentioned earlier, Sexual predators and human traffickers come from different walks of life. This operation in fact resulted in the conviction and arrest of four people from different domains including an active duty Naval recruiter, an insurance manager, Car dealership finance manager and a truck driver.

The officers placed Internet Advertisements for underage prostitutes and the respondents were asked to come to an 'undercover location' that was fitted with audio and video recording devices. When the culprits came and paid cash for the underage girls the evidence was recorded and they were immediately arrested. as, Matt J. Whitworth, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, reported, "Operation Guardian Angel was launched in response to the black market that exists in our community for child prostitution. The U.S. Attorney's Office and our law enforcement partners are committed to combating child sex trafficking by investigating and prosecuting the customers who create the demand for child prostitutes. These sexual predators can come from every walk of life and any socio-economic group." [FBI, 2009]