More people in bondage, panel told

WASHINGTON — The trafficking of human beings constitutes a “growth industry” in the United States, with more than 15,000 people forced into bondage each year as sex slaves or captive laborers, according to testimony before a Senate panel on Wednesday.

Although federal laws enacted over the last three years have enabled prosecutors to crack major trafficking rings, two U.S. attorneys and leaders of victim advocacy groups warned that “modern-day slavery” is spread across the nation and appears to be growing.

“It seems like we’re just touching the tip of the iceberg,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who presided at Wednesday’s hearing. “Clearly we need to be doing more than we’re doing now.”

Anti-trafficking task forces are now operating in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix and Tampa, and Cornyn is pressing for the creation of one in Texas, which shares a 1,200-mile border with Mexico. The Justice Department also plans a three-day conference next week in Tampa as part of an intensified campaign against the trafficking of women and children.

U.S. attorney Johnny Sutton of San Antonio called the trafficking of human beings an “abhorrent offense” that constitutes a top priority for the Justice Department.

Thousands of men, women and children are lured into the United States each year with the promise of good jobs and a brighter future, only to become “commodities” who are forced to live in deplorable conditions, often under the threat of death, witnesses said.

“At the end of the journey, they find coercion, abuse, entrapment and exploitation in a brothel, a massage parlor, an illicit factory, or an agricultural outpost,” said Sister Mary Ellen Dougherty, an immigration expert with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The problem in the United States is part of an illicit global enterprise in which an estimated 800,000 human beings are bought, sold and forced across international borders each year. At least 15,000 people are held against their will in this country, say officials, and some believe the number could be as high as 50,000 per year.

Many of the victims involve children who are forced into child prostitution and pornography rings, witnesses testified.

Cornyn cited one high-profile case in Texas in which traffickers with a ring known as “the Molina organization” lured scores of young women from Honduras to the Fort Worth area with the promise of good jobs as waitresses or housekeepers.

Authorities said the women were transported along dangerous smuggling routes for fees of up to $10,000 apiece, and that at least one was raped during the journey. After they arrived in Fort Worth, they were forced to change into skimpy outfits and work off their smuggling fees as prostitutes or nightclub waitresses, authorities said.