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Las Vegas is the new hub for modern-day slavery, a sinister business in which people are the currency

BY EMMILY BRISTOL, Las Vegas City Life

PHOTO BY BILL HUGHES

Noi was lucky. Her teeth didn't rot. She didn't have to pull them out, as she had seen some of the other women do. It was a desperate move to stop at least some of the pain in their lives.

Like the others in the El Monte, Calif., sweatshop, she worked every day for 18 hours hunched over a sewing machine and then would go to sleep -- among the "rats, cockroaches, flies and lice." She could never leave. Her only food source was to buy nearly rancid food from her boss and captor.

"We lived on the second floor and worked on the first floor. We were locked in and not allowed to go out for anything," Noi wrote in a testimonial she gave to the nonprofit Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking (CAST) in Los Angeles. "I realized later that I had been trapped. There were security guards and barbed wire. We were controlled all the time. It was completely unexpected because my dream was that the United States would be a free country. I thought that people were allowed to go anywhere, rather than be trapped like that. I heard from the owner that black people or Hispanic people would rape us if we tried to go outside the fence."

Noi was one of dozens of victims of human trafficking who were discovered when a California law enforcement task force raided the El Monte sweatshop in 1995. The scandal of Third World-style sweatshops right here in America, sending out goods with "Made in America" labels, shocked people in this country. Many of the victims, all women, had been exhaustively sewing American brand-name garments for up to seven years for little or no pay. Some had not been let outside ever during their time at the factory.

Like most people trafficked, the sweatshop workers were lured to the job because they saw it as a way to make money for their desperately poor families back home. It wasn't until they reached American soil that they learned otherwise.

CAST was formed following the discovery of the El Monte sweatshop. The organization helps provide services and advocacy for victims.

No passport. No money. And no ability to speak the language. Victims are trapped in a system of what many call modern slavery.

"I think it's clearer. There's no blurring the lines about what we're talking about [when we call it modern slavery]," says UNLV sociology professor Kate Hausbeck, who studies the issue.

And this slavery is quietly growing in America. From suburban houses to condemned buildings, humans of all races are being sold or tricked into involuntary servitude and the majority of Americans have no idea.

Sweatshops, agriculture, construction, landscaping, domestic work, restaurants and sex work (from prostitution to illegal massage parlors to underground sex shows). All of these industries and others are touched by this form of slavery. The stories are the stuff of nightmares -- brutality, betrayal and fear. It's convenient to imagine this happens only in distant lands to people we'll never see, but it's right here in America. It's right here in Las Vegas.

In February the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that Las Vegas is one of 17 cities suspected of being a hotbed for human trafficking. A high level of growth, an increasing immigrant population and an economy built on tourism and entertainment make Las Vegas a prime location for the crime.

"We think it's a community that has a serious trafficking problem," says Steven Wagner, director of the HHS human trafficking program. "We're functioning more on intuition on this. We have no idea how many people are caught up in this at any one time."

Who are these people who have been reduced to economic currency? How do we remove the veil from our eyes and see what is happening in our own back yards? How do we end it?

Broken down to its components, whether it's called modern slavery or human trafficking, it is an intricate system of manipulation and lies perpetrated by people who have revoked their citizenship to humanity.

"It may take a certain amount of sadism to be a human trafficker, but this is a crime of economics. It's not done to satisfy that sadism," Wagner says. "It's an economic crime. It's using somebody for financial gain."

Human trafficking is not the same as smuggling. It is not the same as regular prostitution. It is not the same as the poor people who work the migrant labor trails across the United States.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, smuggling is when a person consents to allow another person, often called a "coyote," to bring him across the border, usually for a set fee. Once the transaction is completed, the smuggled person can freely go about his life and usually does not see the coyote again.

People who are victims of human trafficking do not have to be physically moved to be trafficked. The victims either do not consent to their situations or the situation they agree to becomes null and void as their trafficker changes the circumstances to generate illicit profits from the victim's exploitation, according to HHS.

In one of the most common scenarios, a trafficker will publish an advertisement in a foreign country for domestic, construction, manufacturing or agriculture work in America. The person who replies to the ad is then falsely told that he will have a time-specific contract of service for a set price and that his expenses (room, board, airfare) will be paid for up front. Once the person makes the agreement and finds himself in America, the trafficker forces him to pay for the airfare and other expenses, usually holds him captive (when not working), forbids any outside human contact, prevents him from learning English, does not give him money promised, as well as other abuses.

"It's fear more than physical bondage that ties these people to their captors," Wagner says.

From 800,000 to 900,000 people are internationally trafficked each year, with an estimated 18,000 to 20,000 coming to this country, according to the State Department. After drug dealing, human trafficking is tied with arms dealing as the second-largest criminal industry in the world -- and is the fastest-growing, according to HHS.

Most victims of trafficking are from Asia, Central and South America and Eastern Europe. The parts of Southeast Asia destroyed by the tsunamis earlier this year have opened up an even greater market for human trafficking in that region.

Lucita, another trafficking victim who received help from CAST, was duped into slavery by another common method -- recruitment. Traffickers often use family members or victims to recruit new people into the system. Sixty to 70 percent of victims are women; a common element in their stories is they have found themselves in dire poverty and are often the sole breadwinner for their families.

Forced to marry her rapist at age 14, Lucita ended up back at home after suffering much violence at her husband's hands. She lived in a house full of siblings, her parents and her infant daughter. Despite everyone working as hard as possible, there was never enough to eat, Lucita says in a written testimonial provided by CAST.

"My daughter was getting sick and my mother was ill. That was when the recruiter approached me. It was a woman who was a neighbor," says Lucita, who is from Mexico. "She said that if I went to Los Angeles, I would have more money and I could help my parents. She told me I was going to work inside of a house where men come to pick up women.

"She told me that it would only be for three months, and that they would pay for everything. They would pay for the airfare and everything would be fine," Lucita says. "She promised me $15 per client, and said that I could keep tips as well. I decided to go because of my poverty. ... The recruiter said that I couldn't back out; she said that I would have to pay for the ticket. I couldn't earn enough money to pay her back; I could hardly make enough money to buy food for my daughter."

Lucita and two other girls were moved across the border by a coyote, paid by the traffickers. Then she was taken from Phoenix to a house in Pomona, Calif., to work as a prostitute. The windows and doors were barred. She slept in the same bed she worked in. She was not allowed to speak to the other girls and the whole group had to remain very quiet to avoid discovery by neighbors.

"We were under constant threats that if we stepped outside, the police would pick us up; they would beat us up and throw us in jail," Lucita says.

At the end of three months the other girls Lucita had come to the house with were sent back to Mexico, but she was forced to stay because she brought in a good profit. Eventually Lucita and the other trafficking victims were discovered during a police raid.

"They assume everything is going to be legit," says CAST communications and policy director Namju Cho. Usually victims have no understanding of the language, American society or its legal system, Cho says. When victims arrive at CAST and other service agencies across the country, they have to be taught not only English but other life skills, such as how to use a bus, how to shop in an American grocery store and rules of crossing the street.

More often than not, the traffickers are the same nationality as the people who are being trafficked, but not always. Given Kachepa, now 18, was offered by Texas-based missionaries an education, money, clothing as well as a school for his village in Zambia if he performed in an a cappella choir. Then 11 years old, Kachepa was an orphan and thought the opportunity was almost too good to be true.

"I was excited because at the time I had no parents," Kachepa says in a recent telephone interview.

Kachepa was one of about a dozen boys brought over to Texas from Africa in 1998. The missionary business, TTT: Partners in Education Inc., billed itself as a Christian organization and relentlessly toured the choir in churches throughout the country. Sometimes the boys would have to perform six one-hour concerts a day. But the boys were never paid, which meant no money went back home and no school was built in their village. At one point, Kachepa and some of the other boys were forced to dig a pool for their captors -- by hand.

"Your voice would be tired, your legs, everything," Kachepa says.

The Christian group eventually was exposed as a trafficking organization by what was formerly known as the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, renamed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2003. Kachepa and the other boys from his village were not deported, something many trafficking victims fear. Many of the choir boys were taken in by local families.

Just after Kachepa's experience, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 was passed. The legislation makes trafficking a federal crime. Its major points are to eliminate both domestic and foreign trafficking, protect victims and prosecute traffickers. The act was formulated as a way to enable federal prosecution of these crimes as well as establish ways to help those who have been victimized. Offering victims protection from their captors, who often threaten violence against the victims and their families, is key to discovering and prosecuting these criminals.

"We can't count on the victim to come forward," says Wagner, who explains that many times the victims are afraid to come forward because of the lies they've been told about police and threats of deportation. Under TVPA, trafficking victims are extended the same benefits and services as refugees, including a special visa so they are not deported.

But critics say that while TVPA is a positive step, it's not focused enough on helping the victims. CAST's Cho says that debate over whether people will try to assist non-trafficked illegal aliens has placed a high burden of proof on victims.

"I don't know why victims of trafficking are held to such a higher standard," says Cho.

Many victims realize that their circumstances are bad but don't know that there is any way to get help. This is why HHS has launched a public education campaign about human trafficking. As the public -- especially service providers such as police, health care, court and immigration workers -- learns how to spot trafficking victims, they can contact authorities on victims' behalf. The agency's hotline is 888-3737-888.

In Las Vegas two new human trafficking service coalitions have formed in the past year. The Nevada Human Trafficking Working Group focuses more on prosecution and includes agencies such as the Nevada U.S. attorney's office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Department of Labor.

"Though at this time, the number of reported cases of human trafficking appears low in Nevada, all indications are that there are more victims who have not been identified," says local U.S. Attorney Daniel G. Bogden.

The Nevada U.S. attorney's office has prosecuted four cases of human trafficking in the state over the past five years. There are no new cases currently under investigation. The office's highest profile local case was the 2001 sentencing of five Asian conspirators trafficking women from Asia into the country for prostitution, known as Operation Jade Blade.

FBI Special Agent David Schrom would neither confirm nor deny that there are any current local human trafficking investigations. The agent says the Las Vegas field office is in the process of determining how much trafficking is occurring in Southern Nevada. "We're still trying to get our bearings here in Las Vegas," Schrom says. "We have not had a problem in Las Vegas, historically."

Metro is involved in both local coalitions. Sgt. Gil Shannon of Metro's vice section specializing in juvenile prostitution says there's been a marked increase in arrests. In 2004, 207 juveniles, mostly girls, were arrested on prostitution, soliciting and/or loitering charges. As many as 50 percent of those juveniles were brought by a trafficker across state lines.

"That's the highest it's ever been since we've been keeping track," Shannon says. Metro began keeping records on such cases in 1994.

Those who work on these kinds of cases often find it hard to relate stories from the field because they don't like to think about the victim's suffering. One case that has stayed with Shannon was when he brought in a girl who had been working at a local hotel. Her pimp was forcing her to work for him by holding hostage the last gift her dead mother gave to her, a stuffed animal. The girl had worked for the trafficker long enough to have reached a status of loyalty among the other girls. When the pimp was arrested, the girl got her stuffed animal back.

"They've been sold a dream and told a lie," Shannon says.

Wagner says Las Vegas' sexually oriented adult entertainment makes the city a priority for federal scrutiny. "We think that [sexual entertainment] suggests there's a problem with human trafficking."

In February HHS announced the Las Vegas Rescue & Restore Coalition, made up mostly of more than two dozen, local, nonprofit organizations. Rescue & Restore is involved with helping to identify victims and providing recovery services. HHS gave WestCare a $150,000 grant to do street outreach and to help fund a homeless youth shelter, already in existence. WestCare already has had a team since 1998 of two street outreach workers; they patrol various parts of the valley to work with homeless youth, and with the grant they will add two more full-time workers.

Kevin Morss, the WestCare street outreach coordinator, says that in his work with homeless youth he comes across a lot of trafficked prostitutes.

"A lot of them act like adults. They act very knowledgeable on the outside but you start talking to them and they are just kids on the inside," Morss says of the prostitutes, usually girls 13 to 17 years old. "It gets to the point where you try not to think about it too much because it just eats you up."

There is no shelter specifically for trafficking victims in Southern Nevada. But the Salvation Army, a member of the Rescue & Restore Coalition, has volunteered to assist any victims who are found.

"It's a hidden suffering. It's not one you see in the glitz and lights of Las Vegas," says Las Vegas-based Salvation Army Major William Raihl. "It is at the depth and horror of human need."

Until recently, agencies in Southern Nevada had been caught off guard by the rise in human trafficking cases. Indeed, nationwide numbers on trafficking are, at best, estimates because of a lack of reporting and the invisibility of this crime. One recent study probing the number and type of trafficking cases in America had to rely, in part, on media reports, which tend to focus on cases involving sex work.

"It is really more about what types of trafficking law enforcement seeks to bust," says Cho. In her work helping victims she's seen more domestic servants than any other kind of trafficking. "Even more than sex trafficking. They are even more invisible."

Part of the problem is that trafficking often occurs on the back of other crimes, such as smuggling. While some agencies are focused on stemming the tide of illegal workers coming across the border, they are missing the number of American-born citizens trafficked across state lines.

Another problem is that jurisdictional disputes sometimes bog down the system. There are laws against human trafficking at the international level (the United Nations), national level and sometimes state and local levels.

Turf wars among agencies don't help, either. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office says that HHS refused to attend meetings or a press conference to announce the Nevada Human Trafficking Working Group and, in turn, it was not invited to the press conference unveiling Rescue & Restore.

It's hard to keep the faith when working to fight human trafficking. Traffickers facing prosecution often organize mob-style hits on a victim's family. Cho recalls one trafficker who paid to have a victim's family's house burned down the day before giving testimony in court. And, unfortunately, traffickers aren't stuck in jail for long.

CAST client Khai had to serve her captors as a domestic and restaurant worker for nine years, often working 20-hour days for no pay and little food. She was forced to serve on her knees while her captor jabbed her finger into her forehead and told her she was worth nothing, according to a testimonial she gave CAST.

"Except at the restaurant, we were trained as a habit to serve her on our knees," Khai says. "If she sat in a chair, we sat on the floor. We always had to be lower than her."

Khai's trafficker may serve only six years, or 85 percent of her sentence.

IIn some ways every American is tainted by the spoils of human trafficking. After El Monte, it's hard to have faith in the "Made in America" tag in our clothes. The construction industry is littered with tales of misconduct by underhanded vendors and subcontractors. Who's working in the back of your favorite restaurant? Who picked the produce you bought at the grocery store?

"Are we responsible? How do we make sure that the things we buy aren't made through trafficked labor?" Cho asks, noting that the answers are hard to find.

Even the churchgoers who enjoyed listening to the all-boys choir that Kachepa sang in had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.

Perhaps hope has to come from the victims themselves.

"Sometimes, I guess in life, you go through hard things, obstacles that you have to go through," says Kachepa.

Or as Noi says, "Even though I have some damage in my life, I won [the El Monte workers won a $4 million civil judgment against the retailers who contracted with the sweatshop], and things are not so bad after all. I think that to survive and have a good life, you will always have some bumps, chipping and shaking. You can't have life smooth until the end -- that is impossible."

Emmily Bristol is a CityLife staff writer. She can be reached at 871-6780 ext. 344 or ebristol@lvpress.com.