Alliance Fights Slavery in Texas

Alliance forms to fight modern slavery in Texas
'Ancient' crime exists in Houston, a U.S. official says
By HARVEY RICE
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Ruth came to Houston from East Africa a year ago under a contract that promised $5.15 per hour for working a nine-hour day, six days per week taking care of her employer's household.


Instead, she said she found herself a prisoner working for no pay and enduring emotional and physical abuse.

"I was a slave," she said Friday.

Because local and federal police agencies often fail to recognize such victims of this modern slave trade, the U.S. attorney's office announced the formation Friday of the Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance, the fifth such group in the country and the first in Texas.

"This terrible crime, so ancient in its origins, exists right here in Houston, Texas," U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby said as he was joined by representatives of all major local and federal law enforcement agencies in Harris County and several nongovernmental social services organizations.

Shelby said the social services groups will be crucial to finding human-trafficking victims who may be too frightened to turn to police.

Ruth, whose true identity is being withheld because she fears retaliation from her former employer, is one of an estimated 16,000 immigrants who are kidnapped or tricked into coming into the United States and then coerced into prostitution or forced labor, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

She said she despaired until an acquaintance connected her with a program run by YMCA International Services.


Opening eyes of the law
The Texas Office of Immigration and Refugee Affairs says human trafficking is a multinational organized criminal industry generating billions of dollars per year. Most of the victims are women and children.

Shelby said traffickers include the Russian mafia and Asian triads as well as smugglers on the U.S.-Mexican border.

The newly formed alliance will train officers to spot a trafficking victim whom they otherwise might have arrested as a prostitute. The group also will coordinate investigation and prosecution of traffickers, improve the treatment and care of victims for use as witnesses in prosecutions and conduct regional conferences.

The alliance plans to duplicate itself in Brownsville, Corpus Christi, McAllen and Laredo.

"This task force and others like it are an important step toward ending the scourge of human trafficking and slavery," said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who recently authored a resolution calling for increased cooperation among Congress, federal and local law enforcement to end human trafficking.

Officials say they don't know how serious the problem is in Harris County because they have only recently been made aware of it.

District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal said he is unaware of any such cases in the county because law enforcement agencies have not been trained to identify the problem.

"We didn't know what we were looking at," Rosenthal said.

He said the creation of the task force will open local law enforcement's eyes to the crime, "like changing your glasses prescription."

R. Alexander Acosta, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, said, "We don't know what the trends are because the data has not been collected."

Acosta said he is reminded of the seriousness of the crime by a crime-scene photo in his office, showing a teddy bear on a nightstand beside a bed.

The teddy bear belonged to a 14-year-old girl who was forced to have sex with as many as 30 men a day on the bed, he said.

"We simply must do a better job of identifying the victims and bringing human traffickers to justice," Cornyn said.


Efforts get results
Jeff Watkins, executive director of YMCA International Services, said his agency has treated only five victims since it received a $560,000, three-year grant from the Justice Department last year.

The money, which comes from fines and penalties paid by convicted criminals, is used in part to train police in spotting victims of human trafficking.

Watkins said the YMCA trained 1,500 Houston police officers in the past year and will help train other officers in the federal Southern District, which stretches from Huntsville to Brownsville and Laredo.

Last year, the Justice Department formed similar rescue alliances in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Tampa, Fla.

Shelby said the Houston alliance is the first of about a dozen the Justice Department plans to form this year.

An emphasis on the prosecution of human trafficking by the Justice Department led to a tripling of charges filed in the past three years, compared with the previous three years, although the 150 total remains small.

A 2000 federal law and a 2003 Texas law were aimed at human trafficking.

The Houston alliance will be coordinated by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Edward Gallagher and Ruben Perez.