North Texas

Human trafficking called a concern for N. Texas

SMU: Speakers at event urge more attention to troubling issue


12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, April 11, 2007

By TOD ROBBERSON / The Dallas Morning News
trobberson@dallasnews.com

The issues of human trafficking and slavery might seem like problems of faraway lands or a bygone era, but they are real, they are happening now, and the Dallas area is an ongoing focus of concern, according to federal law enforcement officials, prosecutors and groups dedicated to fighting it.

Speaking at an SMU symposium Tuesday, representatives of the Justice Department joined human rights leaders, a New York Times columnist and a local victim in an appeal for the public to become more involved in fighting human trafficking and modern slavery.

"For want of a general awareness, you would think this is not much of a problem here in the metroplex," said Rick Halperin, an SMU history professor and a former chairman of the human rights group Amnesty International. "Human trafficking is a huge problem throughout the world, throughout this country and throughout this metroplex."

With a large immigrant community representing vast segments of Latin America as well as Africa and Asia, North Texas has developed an ability to absorb and hide humans held against their will and forced into work with little or no pay and no prospect of buying their own freedom, various speakers said.

Language barriers, torture, beatings and threats of retaliation against family members back home are sufficient to prevent these victims from escaping or seeking help.

Estimates of the numbers vary widely because the business of human trafficking is so well hidden from the world. One CIA estimate suggested up to 50,000 humans are smuggled into the United States each year for forced labor or prostitution. The State Department puts the number closer to 17,000, out of about 800,000 humans being trafficked worldwide.

"These statistics ... really are based on guesswork because there's really no source" for accurate numbers, said Bill Bernstein, assistant director of Mosaic Family Services, a Dallas nonprofit organization that helps at-risk migrant groups.

Because the victims typically arrive from their home countries with no language training, they cannot communicate with anyone but their captors or other enslaved workers. They are constantly told by their captors that the police are the enemy and that they will be deported immediately if they are caught, said Sarah Saldana, assistant U.S. attorney for North Texas.

In several Dallas-area cases, people from South Korea, Honduras and Zambia have been held against their will, performing forced labor, while their local neighbors had no idea what was happening.

"Even today, people think it's a crime that's not happening in their community," Mr. Bernstein said. "But it's everywhere around us."

Given Kachepa, 20, of Zambia said he was lured out of his country nine years ago by a Sherman-based Christian group that promised him a better life in the United States. When he and 10 other boys got here, they were organized into a choir that toured the nation, earning large fees for the ministry.

Regardless of sickness or fatigue, they were required to perform up to seven concerts a day, with no payment.

"If we did not sing, the choir manager would say, 'No singing, no food,' and he would turn off the gas for the stove so we couldn't cook," Mr. Kachepa said. "Sometimes we went for three days without having anything to eat."

Ms. Saldana, the assistant U.S. attorney, said her office has been active in breaking up various North Texas brothels in which foreign women and girls had been locked up and enslaved after being smuggled into the country.

"Sometimes I quibble about the use of the word 'trafficking' " in reference to the problem "because it tends to imply that there is transportation required" for a crime to be committed, Ms. Saldana said. In fact, "you are going to find victims of modern-day slavery in totally domestic situations. They're used as domestic servants without pay, or with poor pay, and with restricted movement."

Enforcement is problematic because federal, state and local officers tend first to look at laws being broken – such as prostitution – and arrest slavery victims as law-breakers, she said. It is only after further investigation that they determine that a far more serious crime is being committed, but by that time, the arrested victims are so deeply traumatized that they are reluctant to cooperate with prosecutors.

Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist who has reported extensively on international forced-prostitution rings, described the problem as a worldwide, growing epidemic. The best cure, he said, is for the West to press for improved education of girls in poorer nations and to embarrass governments that fail to crack down, particularly on child prostitution.

He made headlines a few years ago by "purchasing" two young Cambodian women to win their freedom from a brothel owner.

"It was terribly unjournalistic and unprofessional," Mr. Kristof said, adding that he paid $353 for their freedom. More shocking, though, was the fact that the brothel owner saw no problem giving him a receipt for the deal.

"It's an astonishing world," he said, "where you can get a receipt for buying another human being."