Human Trafficking and Transnational Organized Crime

Modern-day slavery, euphemistically called trafficking in persons, is a global phenomenon that relies on coercion and exploitation.

Human trafficking extends into every country in the world, including the United States.

Fundamentally, human trafficking deprives people of their human rights and freedoms, which is the most prominent reason that the U.S. Government is working to confront this despicable practice. But human trafficking is a multi-dimensional threat. It is a global health risk, profoundly harming individual victims and transmitting disease including HIV/AIDS. And it is a threat to the safety and security of nations because of the profits generated for organized crime networks that have no respect for the rule of law.

By definition, human trafficking involves force, fraud, or coercion—legally sanitized words that cover intimidation, kidnapping, beatings, rape, deceit, abandonment, and murder. Victims describe mind-numbing varieties of torture, psychological abuse, and physical deprivation that are at the heart of the trafficking experience.

The U.S. Government estimates that between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across borders each year, and between 14,500 and 17,500 are trafficked into the U.S. each year. Millions more are trafficked within their own countries.

Before generalizing, allow me to introduce one victim. Rosa was trafficked from Mexico to the U.S. Her true story illustrates the nature and scope and harm of human trafficking.

Rosa was 13 and waiting tables in a restaurant in a small village near Vera Cruz, Mexico, when she was approached by an acquaintance who told her, "You know you can make 10 times more money in the U.S. doing this. I know someone who can find you a job in Texas. You can send money home to your family; you can have your own life. You can’t lose."

Rosa was young and hopeful. Against her parents’ and friends’ warnings, she secretly accepted the offer. She was told to go to the main hotel in town one night where a car was waiting, with several other young girls in it from neighboring villages.

They drove into the desert toward the Mexican-American border. They stopped in the desert on the Mexican side where they met dozens of girls from other towns in Mexico, and more men too.

They were told to put on backpacks, and they began to walk. They walked four days and four nights—through the desert, across the Rio Grande, and into Brownsville, Texas, where they were picked up by a white van and driven across Texas, Louisiana and into rural Florida, where they were dropped off in front a series of trailers.

A big guy came out and told them, "I’ve just bought you. Now you work for me." A little later an older woman took them to spots in the trailer. She told Rosa she was in a brothel and that she would have to buy her freedom by sexually servicing men.

Rosa was young. She was a virgin. She was Catholic. She knew what the woman was telling her was bad—a sin. She began to cry and begged to be taken to a restaurant to work. But she was told, "There are no restaurant jobs, only this." When she refused to do what they said, the burly man brought out three other men who took her into one of the trailers and gang-raped her to induct her into the "business." Then they locked her in the trailer without food and water until she gave in.

For the next six months she was a prisoner. She was forced to service 10 or more men a day. On the weekends it was as many as 20 to 30 men. The men bought a ticket, which was a condom, for $20. But they often didn’t use it.

Twice Rosa became pregnant and was forced to have an abortion. She was forced back into the brothel the next day. She was forced to pay off the price of the abortions. She was beaten if she refused a customer’s demands. She was guarded 24 hours a day. She was passed around at private parties the trafficking ring held in the evenings and on weekends. In addition to trafficking women and children, this ring also robbed banks and ran drugs.

Once she and several others tried to escape. They were caught and pistol-whipped around the head and face in front of the other girls—to deter all of them. She became sick and felt crazy. The traffickers offered her drugs and alcohol to numb her pain.

She was only rescued when one of the young women jumped out of a second story window at one of the private parties and ran to a neighbor’s house. The neighbor called the local police. The police called the INS and FBI, and a sting operation was set up. Over 40 young women and girls were rescued, and 14 traffickers were arrested.

A medical doctor examined Rosa. She had sexually transmitted diseases. She had pelvic inflammatory disease and scar tissue from the forced abortions. She had broken bones that hadn’t healed properly from the beatings. She was addicted to drugs and alcohol, had post-traumatic stress syndrome, including nightmares, flashbacks, depression, and suicidal tendencies. In short, she was physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually broken.

If you take Rosa’s story and multiply it by hundreds of thousands, even millions, you will get an idea of the magnitude of the problem.

People are trafficked for many purposes. You just heard one story—of trafficking for purposes of prostitution. But men, women, and children are trafficked for forced labor into construction, agriculture, sweatshops, and factories. Children are trafficked for camel jockeying, and to be child soldiers, or into brick factories, rug-making sweatshops, or cocoa plantations because their small bodies and little fingers are useful in making or picking these products. Women and children are trafficked for domestic servitude and sexual exploitation. Up to 80 percent of the victims of transnational human trafficking are women and children.

I congratulate the OAS for taking up this important issue and including it in its Action Plan to fight organized crime.

In confronting modern-day slavery, our approach is organized by the three "Ps": prosecution, prevention, and protection. The traffickers function as long as they operate beyond the law and between systems of enforcement so prosecution is essential. Prevention is self-evident but under employed. Vulnerable people, especially women and children, should be warned that promises of work abroad are often traps. And protection appears to be the greatest challenge for many governments that, tragically, treat slaves like criminals.

My message—in every country I visit and with every dignitary I meet—is that each part of this three-part approach is essential. Every state, including the United States, must start by building its domestic anti-TIP capacity.

Our experience around the world indicates that in fighting the criminal dimension of human trafficking, the indispensable actor is the national state. The national state must prepare its institutions to treat trafficking as a serious crime.

Before attempting ambitious regional agreements, all individual states in the Americas need to do much more work at home—develop their own legal frameworks, pass and implement good national anti-trafficking laws, and deal with corruption that often makes trafficking possible.

National police, immigration services and other national institutions must have the capacity to identify and arrest human traffickers.

National prosecutors must have the tools and the determination to prosecute and convict traffickers.

National judiciaries must have the resources and resolve to enforce criminal sentences handed down to traffickers.

The role of international organizations like the OAS is to help make national governments effective in their domestic agendas to fight human trafficking. I think that is where we are in the development of a common approach for the Americas to fight the organized crime of human trafficking.

The Western Hemisphere has come a very long way in the last few years in addressing the complex human trafficking challenge. When I came to the State Department three years ago, the issues was in its infancy. We are seeing so much more recognition and activity.

Four broad areas of the human trafficking phenomenon that the hemisphere should put some extra attention on are: 1) the explosion of child prostitution and commercial sexual exploitation, 2) the many faces of the migration issue and the frequency that human smuggling turns into human trafficking, 3) the fact that state corruption often facilitates human trafficking, and; 4) the need to encourage non-government involvement in the solution because private organizations are often essential in victim protection.

If prostitution and commercial sexual exploitation were not tolerated, we wouldn’t have sex trafficking. To confront that fact, we need to confront the demand for victims, not just the supply of victims.

Migration continues to diversify. There is increasing Asian migration into the hemisphere, and migration trends from the hemisphere to Europe, not to mention migration into the U.S. More and more, we find bonded labor schemes function to put people—who start out as willing participants—into slavery that is simply inhuman. Can you imagine this? Chinese smugglers commonly charge $20,000-$30,000 a head to arrange transport to the hemisphere. Essentially the smuggler owns that person when they reach whatever destination they reach. And the debt is often impossible to fulfill. It’s labor slavery, not a new future.

I have painted a bleak picture but recent years governments and citizens and non-governmental organizations have begun to awaken. Worldwide, the number of trafficking-related convictions has increased to over 3,000 in 2004, and new anti-human trafficking legislation was approved in 39 countries. The struggle will be a long one.