Crackdown planned on human smuggling
SEATTLE – The federal government plans to launch an Anti-Trafficking Task Force here this fall to improve enforcement of laws against smuggling people for work in sweatshops, massage parlors, restaurants and farms.
Experts believe the area’s many points of entry – Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the Port of Seattle and the U.S.-Canadian border just 180 miles north – make Seattle one of the nation’s human-trafficking hot spots.
Federal and local officials know that criminals are smuggling thousands of people from around the world into Washington, but few of them are ever found because many local law-enforcement agencies have no idea how to identify trafficking victims.
Philadelphia, Phoenix, Atlanta and Tampa, Fla., already have trafficking task forces. Newark, N.J., will launch one at the end of the summer, and Seattle and Portland will both begin theirs in the fall. Three more are planned after that.
Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said the government is making anti-trafficking a higher priority because “we’re not satisfied with the numbers of identifications and prosecutions we’ve seen in the last three years.”
The CIA estimates that 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked into the country every year, but so far the government has identified just 550 victims nationwide – 14 of them in Washington, Horn said.
“This is largely a hidden problem,” Horn told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “People don’t know that it’s happening. A good percentage of those who are trafficked are being trafficked for labor reasons – to work in migrant camps. They’re being held in debt bondage. … It really is akin to a modern-day form of slavery.”
Trafficking arrests, investigations and convictions are rare in part because many of the officers, social workers and health-care workers who are likely to encounter victims have not been trained to recognize signs of trafficking.
The task force will work to strengthen relationships among local police officers, federal investigators and the community groups that work with immigrants, focusing on how to recognize human trafficking and what to do about it.
Congress, President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have said that trafficking enforcement should be a national priority, but many local officers aren’t aware they’re supposed to be on the lookout for it, said Officer Michael Chiu, spokesman for the Bellevue Police Department.
“Oftentimes federal laws don’t reach the local level,” Chiu said. “We have not received any training to date about trafficking.”
The Seattle Police Department is one of a few local law-enforcement agencies that provide such training
Detective Harvey Sloan has been working with Seattle’s year-old Trafficking Response Team to arrange 15-minute lectures for officers during the briefing sessions at the start of each shift.
Federal anti-trafficking law says people are victims of trafficking if they are trapped in debt bondage, servitude, the sex trade or other situations through fraud, coercion or the threat of force. The state passed a similar law last year.
Area victim advocates say they know of people trapped by trafficking rings currently operating here and around the state.
Most don’t come forward because they’re afraid they’ll be deported or jailed, said Rubi Romero, domestic violence-program director at Consejo, a Seattle-based social services agency that primarily serves Hispanics.
Horn and others at the federal level hope that the new task force will build trust and smooth relations between the community-based agencies and federal investigators working to find and prosecute traffickers.
“These victims are scared, they don’t speak the language, they come without documentation,” said R. Alexander Acosta, an assistant attorney general for civil rights. “They’re not going to pick up the phone and call the FBI.”