Slave Next Door (38 page)

department had been doing “show and tell” presentations on human

trafficking. Van Brunt got them to let him take some of their materials

out into the community. With a representative of a local faith-based

group, he began visiting the Hispanic churches in the area. After serv-

ices, antitrafficking workers and Van Brunt would speak to the congre-

gation. Van Brunt would ask—through a translator—if people knew of

trafficking situations or possible victims. Within a short time, he was

getting calls reporting possible trafficking cases.

Since Van Brunt’s unit doesn’t handle sex-related crimes, he “went

down the hall to the Vice guys, to partner up.” From then on, when the

Vice Unit raided a brothel, Van Brunt and his partner went along to

look for human trafficking. Soon he was recruiting informants to probe

both labor and sex trafficking. “Most people in that world,” he said,

“see trafficking and pay no attention to it. It gets confusing.”10

Van Brunt, who describes himself as “proactive,” joined a local

human trafficking task force. Funded by a Department of Justice (DOJ)

grant, it grew larger. Van Brunt also expanded his work doing antitraf-

ficking presentations at the obligatory annual in-service training for all

officers. In his presentation, he explains how to recognize the signs of

slavery and focuses on a crucial aspect of the process—the victim inter-

view. “Most law enforcement officers,” he observes, “are after admis-

sions or confessions. Interviewing a possible victim of human trafficking

is totally different. These are skills that have to be taught. I tell them,

‘Know your limitations. If it’s not in you, bring in someone else.’”11 He

welcomes the presence of a victim advocate to assist in an interview.

After his second presentation, an officer with a possible trafficking case

contacted Van Brunt.

By 2008, Van Brunt and his partner had uncovered and pursued five

slavery cases—two relating to sex trafficking and three to forced labor.12

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One involves a Tampa resident, Marcelino Guillen Jaimes, accused of

smuggling a Mexican into Florida for a transportation fee of $2,000

and then forcing him into a construction job working seven days a week,

ten hours a day, to pay off his debt.13 But Van Brunt expresses frustra-

tion with local prosecutors. “In my judicial circuit,” he explains, “not a

single prosecutor belongs to the trafficking task force. No one can pos-

sibly know all the laws; still it would be nice if at least one attorney was

familiar with the state trafficking statutes.”14

The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) is commit-

ted to training and motivating law enforcement on human trafficking.

The IACP works to improve the standards and practices of over eighteen

thousand police departments nationwide. It offers training seminars, as

well as booklets and a handbook on how to recognize and approach

human trafficking cases. The challenge of human trafficking, according

to an official at IACP who asked not to be named, “is a fairly new one

to us. Most policemen believe slavery ended with the Thirteenth

Amendment. They feel it can’t happen here; it’s hard for them to wrap

their heads around.”

Local cops and their departments have broken big slavery cases, but

many in local law enforcement feel that trafficking is a federal affair and

that they lack local and state jurisdiction. With the passage of state

laws, the same IACP official explained, “it has now become their beat.

But still, the awareness and training are missing. Without adequate

training, they’re not seeing or understanding the crime.” And although

some city police departments—Houston, San Diego, Atlanta, Seattle, El

Paso are good examples—have dedicated significant resources to

addressing trafficking, most are “unaware. They frankly don’t know

what it is. And when they find out, they are easily overwhelmed with the

huge need for resources—money, manpower, and time—to wage a suc-

cessful campaign.” With training, however, police “often take it as an

opportunity to free people. It can be so satisfying. But the training needs

to get out there, and the feds simply aren’t putting it there.”

Many local police forces are scrambling to find—or invent their

own—antislavery training. But for every police department and sheriff’s

office trying to get a handle on the problem, there are perhaps thou-

sands that remain untrained and unmotivated. Unless local law enforce-

ment takes an active interest in detecting and eliminating human

trafficking, protecting the survivors, and punishing the bad guys, and

until the federal government beefs up and expands its training pro-

grams, the number of prosecutions will remain in the hundreds, while

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thousands of cases will remain undetected, and the victims will stay

hidden and enslaved.

T H E T H R E E “ R ’ S ” — R E S E A R C H , R E S C U E ,

A N D R E S T O R E

It may not be the first place you would expect to find them, but schools

and universities have also emerged as leaders in the fight against slavery.

In July 2007, Florida Gulf Coast University established the Esperanza

Center for Human Trafficking Research, Policy and Community

Initiatives, a “national human-trafficking center on campus to block the

flow of sex slaves and abused laborers into the country.” The center

aims to coordinate the several agencies that are “already active in pre-

venting and prosecuting what often is dubbed modern-day slavery.”

Both federal and grant funding support the center. Florida could use the

help. According to Fort Myers–based chief assistant U.S. attorney Doug

Molloy, “Southwest Florida has more trafficking cases than many

states.” He should know; in 2007 Molloy and his staff were working

eleven active cases, which ran the gamut from sex and domestic slavery

to indentured servitude in the workplace.15

It took the arrest of two people for the sex trafficking of two young

girls, aged thirteen and seventeen, to awaken Nashville, Tennessee from

its complacency—and move Middle Tennessee State University to

action. As trafficking cases go it was not unusual: physical force and

threats were used against the girls and their families to get them to

submit to prostitution. But it made quick work of the attitude that “it

can’t happen here.” A June 2007 newspaper article stated, “People

expect to read about it in magazines or watch a prime-time news show

special report. But human trafficking in Nashville? It seems unlikely at

best.” Responding to the case, Middle Tennessee State University hosted

a panel discussion on trafficking, featuring two local women who had

“long . . . been working to raise public awareness.” One was Amber

Beckham, coordinator for World Relief’s Network of Emergency

Trafficking Services, who had provided training to the Nashville police,

teaching them to spot cases they would otherwise have missed. Beckham

earned high marks with the police. Sergeant Brooks Harris of

Nashville’s Specialized Investigations Unit explained, “She’s bringing us

to a keen awareness of the problem and the indicators to be on the look-

out for. . . . She’s teaching us to take another four or five minutes to dig

a little deeper.”16

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One of America’s most innovative local antislavery groups is the

Rescue and Restore Coalition of Houston, Texas. The coalition has

brought together businesses, student groups, religious groups and

churches, and community service organizations such as domestic vio-

lence shelters. A broad base is important because Houston is not only a

well-known point of entry for human traffickers but the site of large-

scale slavery cases as well. One of these, the Mondragon case, had more

than one hundred victims, most trafficked into sexual exploitation. In

collecting information from the victims, the coalition discovered an

important fact. “We found that 80 percent of the victims reported being

in clubs, bars, or shops where alcohol was sold,” explained Stephanie

Weber of the coalition, “and we started thinking about how to reach

people in that way.”17 In a bold move, the coalition convinced the state

legislature to pass a law requiring every business where alcohol is sold

to post a bilingual sign listing the national hotline number and an assur-

ance of anonymity, along with a message stating that “obtaining forced

labor or services is a crime.” After the signs went up and all alcohol

beverage control agents received training, the national hotline reported

a sharp increase in calls from Houston. By late 2008, Weber reported,

“even restaurants and coffee shops that aren’t required to put up the

sign are posting it.”18

The coalition also faced the problem of law enforcement investiga-

tions that went nowhere. In the large Latino community, there was fear

that cooperation with police might lead to deportations, and good tips

would be met with stony silence. Six neighborhoods were identified

where trafficking cases were likely but underreported. To reach out,

the coalition designed a dramatic billboard message: “Stop Modern

Day Slavery in Houston,” read the headline next to a picture of a young

woman, then “Save a Victim of Human Trafficking Today,” followed by

the national hotline number. Thanks to a printing company in the coali-

tion and a discount from the billboard supplier, ninety large-scale bill-

boards went up in the Houston area, especially near the six

neighborhoods with the lowest response rate. In a follow-up effort, sim-

ilar signs are now being placed on the backs of taxicabs for the next

three years. The total cost of these efforts has been low because of the

breadth of the coalition; the impact, however, has been significant.

When students and staff at Denver University formed a Task Force on

Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in early 2005, action against

human trafficking picked up rapidly. With a base in the university, the

task force expanded to cover other organizations, provided training to

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law enforcement, and moved new laws onto the books. A key player in

this work was Claude d’Estrée, a law professor and Buddhist chaplain at

the university. D’Estrée was used to hands-on work: with the Red Cross

he had coordinated the response at the crash site of Flight 93 on

September 11, 2001, and was later recognized for it in a Rose Garden

ceremony at the White House. Denver University students under his

tutelage became spark plugs, and with others they helped create a

Colorado Human Trafficking Task Force and a statewide Network to

Eliminate Human Trafficking, as well as to support and advise the

Colorado State Patrol’s new unit responsible for human trafficking.

These and other initiatives, including effective victim identification and

support, are carried out in Colorado in cooperation with the Polaris

Project.

The role of colleges and universities has been crucial in raising aware-

ness and helping to bring communities together. For example, Free the

Slaves, the international antislavery organization based in Washington,

D.C., sends speakers to dozens of universities each year, coordinating

workshops and advising local and state politicians. Students and teach-

ers are good at getting information before the public, but awareness is

just step one. Once achieved, knowledge needs to be put into action,

and other groups have been organizing and reinventing themselves to

fight slavery in America.

A N E F F E C T I V E W E B O F S E R V I C E P R O V I D E R S

We’ve seen how dissension and sometimes downright bitterness exists

among many antitrafficking groups. Profound and seemingly insoluble

issues relating to policy, philosophy, funding, religion, and the place and

performance of government keep organizations from working together,

in spite of their shared avowed goal to eradicate human trafficking.

Battle lines have been drawn around such questions as the nature of

prostitution, the conditions placed on the distribution of money and

services, and the very definitions of trafficking and slavery. Such infight-

ing hurts the efforts of these organizations.

This is why it is important to point to a nationwide group of inde-

pendent service provider organizations that have joined together as the

Freedom Network. Formed in early 2001, they are, by their own defini-

tion, a coalition of over thirty “non-governmental organizations that

provide services to, and advocate for the rights of, trafficking survivors

in the United States.” Formed not long after the passage of the TVPA in

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