Hirono pushes FBI to address high incidence of trafficking of Native Hawaiian women

A week after Hawaii's Senator Mazie Hirono urged FBI Director Christopher Wray to do more to protect human trafficking victims in Hawaii, especially Native Hawaiians, seven young human trafficking victims were rescued in Honolulu.

According to FBI Honolulu, as part of a cross-country operation at least seven girls were located and rescued on Oahu on Friday by FBI agents, the Honolulu Police Department, the Missing Child Center of Hawaii (MCCH),

The FBI noted that two traffickers in Hawaii were arrested in connection with the victims. The suspects face child sexual exploitation and human trafficking charges.

"Native Hawaiian women and girls represent 67% to 77% of sex trafficking victims in the state of Hawaii," said US Sen. Mazie Hirono . “Native Hawaiians also represent 37% of reported child sex trafficking cases,” she cited to Wray during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Hirono pressed  Wray on what the Bureau is doing to protect the Native Hawaiian community from sexual exploitation at a full Judiciary Committee hearing. During the hearing, Hirono highlighted how sexual exploitation disproportionately impacts Native Hawaiian women and children in the state of Hawaii.

Hirono also emphasized the need for the FBI to include the Native Hawaiian community in its efforts to address the missing and murdered Indigenous people crisis and violence against Native communities.

According to census data, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander groups make up 10.5% of today's Hawaii’s population. However, they constitute the majority of sex trafficking cases. When looking at child sex trafficking cases, Native Hawaiians represent 37% of victims statewide.

“The federal government owes the same trust responsibility to Native Hawaiians as it does to American Indians and Alaska Natives,” said Senator Hirono during the exchange. “Even if [the Violence Against Women Act] doesn’t specifically allow for protection of Hawaiian women and children, there’s nothing that stops the FBI from including Native Hawaiian women and children as part of your charge.”

“I will say that you put your finger on an important issue, and our Honolulu office has been working very hard to target and aggressively pursue federal charges on known and repeat human trafficking offenders,” Wray responded.

He said that office found are gangs and drug trafficking organizations "exploit vulnerable victims, and in particular, the lion’s share—as you say with the statistics that you were citing—the lion’s share of that is on displaced or marginalized sectors, especially Native Hawaiians." 

"And, in fact, I think it was just this past week, our Honolulu office recovered, I think, three minor females who were missing and at risk on the Big Island. And I know they’re very aggressively working that issue."

Hirono is a strong advocate for ensuring the federal government meets the trust responsibility owed to all Native Americans, including American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians, and is a longstanding supporter of programs and resources that uplift women and children. In May, she introduced a resolution designating May 5th as National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

The seven human trafficking victims rescued in Hawaii were part of a nationwide enforcement campaign dubbed "Operation Cross Country." The FBI, working with its state and local partners during the month of August, identified and located 84 minor victims of child sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation offenses and located 37 actively missing children.

Data from rescue groups found that while more than 20% of Indigenous people remain missing for 30 days or longer, only 11% of white people remain missing for the same time period. Another disparity was present in terms of media coverage: While 30% of Indigenous homicide victims made the news, more than 50% of white victims did.

"Human trafficking is among the most heinous crimes the FBI encounters,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “Unfortunately, such crimes—against both adults and children—are far more common than most people realize. As we did in this operation, the FBI and our partners will continue to find and arrest traffickers, identify and help victims, and raise awareness of the exploitation our most vulnerable populations.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter. 

DOJ marks National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month

During Human Trafficking Prevention Month, one of the Justice Department's first cases in 2021 resulted in a life sentence for a Florida man who directed, primarily through online communications and transactions, the sex trafficking of impoverished young children in the Philippines.

Senior U.S. District Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington on Jan. 7 sentenced Christopher John Streeter, 63, to life in federal prison for sex trafficking of a child under the age of 14. Streeter had pleaded guilty on October 15, 2020.

According to court documents, from September 2018 through June 2019, Streeter directly participated in a scheme that sexually exploited children in the Philippines in order to produce child sex-abuse videos for his consumption. Over that period, Streeter communicated and transacted with Philippines-based facilitators to recruit children to engage in sex acts on camera. The child victims — some of whom were as young as 12 and 13 years of age — were particularly vulnerable due to poverty and illness.

Streeter sent payments to the Philippines in exchange for depictions of the victims engaging in sex acts. Streeter received videos and images of children involved in various sex acts that tracked Streeter’s directives. 

One of Streeter’s victims was a 12-year-old girl from Ozamis, Philippines. In 2018 and 2019, Streeter communicated with a Philippine recruiter in Ozamis named Analyn Tababini. On multiple occasions, while in the Tampa Bay area, Streeter paid Tababini to arrange for sex-abuse videos to be made of the victim. The monies covered production costs, including the male abuser, money for the victim, hotel expenses, and a commission for Tababini. In return, Tababini sent Streeter several videos of the abuse suffered by the young girl. 

In addition to working for Streeter, Homeland Security Investigations Transnational National Criminal Investigative Unit in Manila discovered that Tababini has facilitated internet sex shows of minors in exchange for payment from an array of international clientele. 

In a recent, coordinated operation conducted by the Philippine National Police in Ozamis, Philippines, six of Tababini’s child sex-trafficking victims (including Streeter’s 12-year-old victim) were rescued by the Philippine Department of Social Welfare and Development. Philippine authorities also arrested Tababini.

“This morally corrupt individual thought he could circumvent justice because of international borders,” said HSI Tampa Acting Deputy Special Agent in Charge Micah C. McCombs. 

The Philippines victim-rescue operation was conducted by the Philippine National Police (Manila), with assistance from Homeland Security Investigations (Tampa and Manila), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (National Targeting Center), the Philippine National Police Woman and Children Protection Center (Mindanao Field Unit), and the Ozamis City Police Office.

The DOJ, along with local law enforcement agencies, continue to battle this modern day form of slavery. Information on the Department of Justice’s efforts to combat human trafficking can be found at www.justice.gov/humantrafficking.

This reprehensible case was brought to light as the DOJ Friday (Jan. 29) commemorated the 10th annual National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month and declared a continued commitment to combatting human trafficking in all its forms. The fight against human trafficking remains one of the department’s highest priorities, and the department will remain relentless in its efforts to bring traffickers to justice and seek justice for survivors.

Also in 2021, the department successfully convicted a labor trafficker who used debts, threats, abuse, and assaults to compel the victim’s unpaid labor for 10 hours a day, six to seven days a week, in the defendant’s North Carolina nail salon. 

The department also secured a life sentence and over $900,000 in restitution against a Texas sex trafficker who compelled women and girls to engage in commercial sex through violence, isolation, intimidation, and threats.

Human trafficking is a crime that preys on some of the most vulnerable members of our society. It is a crime of exploitation that deprives victims of their rights, freedom, and dignity. Traffickers exploit the vulnerable through forced labor or commercial sex involving children or involving adults subjected to force, fraud, or coercion.

“The Department of Justice is unflagging in its resolve to eradicate human trafficking and pursue justice for those affected by these heinous crimes,” said Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson. In fiscal year 2020, the department brought 210 federal human trafficking cases against 337 defendants, and secured 309 convictions.

If you or someone you know is being trafficked, contact local law enforcement or report it to federal law enforcement through the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or 1-866-347-2423.

Woman charged with smuggling people into the U.S. from China

A Nevada woman was arrested Wednesday for her alleged role in a multi-year scheme to commit visa fraud, money laundering, and smuggling Chinese nationals into the United States.

Haiyan Liao, 43, of Las Vegas, is charged in an indictment obtained in the Eastern District of New York and unsealed Wednesday (Jan. 13) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada. 

She is charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud and bringing foreign nationals into the U.S. for financial gain, and money laundering conspiracy.

“The United States benefits from the rich diversity of culture and experience which results from lawful immigration into our country,” said David P. Burns, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. 

“This defendant, however, is charged with submitting false applications for visitor visas to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou and engaging in money laundering as part of a multi-year (human) smuggling business that brought Chinese nationals into the United States illegally.”

“The defendant provided fake documents and coached her accomplices regarding how to lie during visa interviews and customs checks,.” said Acting U.S. Attorney Seth D. DuCharme of the Eastern District of New York. 

According to the indictment, Liao, with others, fraudulently obtained visitor visas by submitting applications containing false statements to the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China as part of a scheme to traffic people from China to the U.S. 

For the people whose  applications were approved, Liao would facilitate their travel to the U.S., including accompanying them on commercial flights to Queens and Brooklyn, New York. The aliens and their families paid thousands of dollars in exchange for the visitor visas and travel to the U.S. 

California Couple charged with human trafficking, wage theft

Amarjit and Balwinder Mann are accused of human trafficking. 

An Indian American couple has been charged with human trafficking for locking a man in a liquor store, where he worked 15 hour shifts, seven days a week, slept in a storage room, bathed in a mop bucket, and was never paid.

The husband and wife, Amarjit and Balwinder Mann, both 66, are accused of threatening the victim with deportation if he told the truth to law enforcement. The Manns face charges of labor human trafficking, witness intimidation, and wage theft involving a total of four victims. 

“Slavery officially was abolished in 1865,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said. “Tragically, we are seeing examples of it in 2020. My Office will prosecute anyone to the fullest extent of the law who practices this kind of criminal and inhumane exploitation.”

The suspects, residents of Gilroy, Calif., were arraigned Nov. 9. If convicted of the felonies, they could face prison time.

An investigation estimates that the suspects had stolen more than $150,000 in wages from the victim and three other employees. The Manns engaged in predatory recruitment of their workers from India and lured them with promises of travel and financial independence. 

In late February 2020, an Alcoholic Beverage Control inspection discovered the victim at M&M Liquors located on Westwood Drive in Gilroy. The agent contacted a man who appeared to be living in a small storage room in the back area of the store – a major red flag for human trafficking. 

Agents noted a thin mattress lying over milk crates, an office desk contained folded clothes in each drawer. On top of the desk there were pots and pans for cooking and next to the desk, there was a mop sink with a faucet approximately three feet off the ground and a shampoo bottle. Investigators later learned the victim was bathing from the mop sink. 

The store where the victim was forced to work.

The investigation further concluded that the man had flown from India in 2019 expecting to travel to the U.S. with the couple. Instead they took his money and passport and put him to work without pay or a key to leave the liquor store at night.

The victim, whose name was not revealed by authorities, eventually mustered up the courage to leave the store and flee to a safehouse, with the help of human trafficking advocates. He wrote an affidavit about his situation, in which he said he continued to work for the Manns because he had no other options, and did not want to tell his family back in India what had happened to him. While entrapped, according to the affidavit, the victim was allowed to leave the store just once: to go to the San Jose gurdwara on New Year’s Day.

Three other men – two who worked at the liquor store and one who worked at the market across the street - told agents that they worked marathon hours and were paid a pittance. One said he had no idea about the concept of a minimum wage.

Woman sentenced to 15 years for human trafficking

An Indian American woman was sentenced to 15 years in prison for human trafficking and using the victims, primarily from India, into forced labor.

Sharmistha Barai, 40, formerly of Stockton, Calif., was sentenced Friday, Oct. 2 to 15 years and eight months in prison for forced labor violations.

On March 14, 2019, after an 11-day trial, a federal jury found Barai and her husband Satish Kartan guilty of conspiracy to obtain forced labor and two counts of obtaining forced labor. Kartan is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 22.

“The United States abolished slavery and involuntary servitude more than 150 years ago,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband. “Yet, inhuman forced labor and deprivations of liberty and dignity persist because human traffickers are modern-day slave masters who endeavor to exploit their fellow human beings for profit and other gruesome purposes. 

"The defendant’s role in this scheme to compel the victims into servitude for up to 18 hours a day, with minimal pay, through intimidation, threats, and violence, is an unconscionable violation of the victims’ individual rights, freedom, and dignity," said Dreiband.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, between February 2014 and October 2016, Kartan and Barai hired workers from overseas to perform domestic labor in their home in Stockton. In advertisements seeking workers on the internet and India-based newspapers, the defendants made false claims about the wages and conditions of employment. 

Once the workers arrived at the defendants’ Stockton residence, Kartan and Barai forced them to work up to 18 hours a day limited rest and nourishment. Few of them were paid any wage. The defendants kept the domestic workers from leaving and coerced them to continue working by threatening them, by creating an atmosphere of fear, control, and disempowerment, and at times by physically hitting or burning them. When a victim resisted or expressed a desire to leave, the threats and abuse became worse.

“One by one the victims told their stories of the brutality they experienced: long hours of labor, inadequate food, and physical assault. Today’s sentence sends a clear message to others that systematic brutality against vulnerable victims will not be tolerated,” said U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott of the Eastern District of California.

REPORT: Homeland Security agents engaged in sex acts with suspected trafficking victims

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Undercover agents with Homeland Security investigating human trafficking in Arizona repeatedly paid for and engaged in sex acts with suspected victims, alleged Cronkite News and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism.

The victims were allegedly forced to live and work in filth and near darkness, the federal agent said, surviving on only the tips they received from performing massages and sexual favors. Lon Weigand, the deputy special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Arizona, described them as “Asian females” who may be sex-trafficking victims.

Based on the investigative report, police undercover agents said they were told by HSI that its policy permitted undercover agents to engage in sex acts with suspects.

The report also maintains that some supervisors knew about this activity. When Homeland Security Investigations refused to let its agents testify in a case that took three years to build, all felony charges against the ringleaders were dropped.

“That’s our tax money,” said defense attorney Josephine Hallam. “Shouldn’t they be at the border, or doing something with terrorists rather than getting sex acts?” he said to Cronkite News.

According to Reason, agents dubbed their investigation Operation Asian Touch.

An HSI memo obtained by Reason describes an undercover federal agent telling a masseusse “to masturbate him” or to strip naked or go topless while performing a sex act on him.

That encounter, along with HSI’s refusal to let its agents testify at trial, torpedoed a case that was more than three years in the making. All felony charges against the accused ringleaders were dropped. And the women likely were retraumatized, sex-trafficking experts said.

Defense attorneys, whose clients went free because of HSI’s mishandling of the case, were outraged to learn of the agents’ “investigative techniques.”

In December 2019, according to Reason, prosecutors dropped all charges against Amanda Yamauchi and Dean Michael Bassett, who they suspected in being the ringleaders of the “transnational criminal organization.” Reason maintains authorities were willing to let the suspects go rather than answer questions about its agents engaging in sex acts during their investigation.

“In my experience in law enforcement, these types of things do not just happen in one spot,” said defense attorney Brad Rideout who represented two women charged in the case.

Homeland Security says it always keeps the victims as the focus of its investigations.

“HSI is committed to placing the safety of potential victims at the forefront of every investigation,” said Yasmeen Pitts O’Keefe, a spokeswoman with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, HSI’s parent agency. “Conduct by a limited number of HSI agents involved in the investigation was not consistent with HSI policy,” she said to Cronkite News and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism.

The HSI had an online Underground Operations Handbook, statements by local police and the federal government's response appear to refute the allegation that these actions committed by rogue agents.

Over a nearly five-month period, the HSI undercover agents documented in graphic detail 17 allegedd sexual encounters with women working in eight massage parlors. Only two women were designated as victims, but their whereabouts are unknown. Two other women who were charged with prostitution were initially put in ICE detention, although only one still faces deportation hearings.

Except for a low-level supervisor, none of the agents involved in the scandal was disciplined, according to the report.

“It is difficult to exaggerate the extent to which the law enforcement community collectively turns a blind eye when its members engage in misconduct,” said Clark Neily, vice president for criminal justice at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C.

Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, who serves on the Arizona Human Trafficking Council, called the case a “terrible demonstration of our behavior as a country.”

“Their job is to collect evidence and testify about it in court,” she said, referring to HSI agents. “They don’t actually have any other function. Their whole job was to testify and close that case. They are not fulfilling their duties.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: The five-part investigation into these alleged acts by Cronkite News and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism can be read here. 

Man accused of treating woman and her son as slaves

Lured by the American Dream,  a Filipina and her son instead lived like slaves in a nightmare.

High school teacher Christian Mothershead, 46, of West Allis was charged Aug. 30 in Milwaukee County Circuit Court with two counts of human trafficking and one count of second-degree sexual assault, all felonies.

Court records say Mothershead met the unidentified woman on a dating website in 2017. He then traveled to the Philippines, where he spent three weeks promising to marry her and further her education if she agreed to move to the US.

CHRISTIAN MOTHERSHEAD

The victim and her son, both unnamed in the report, arrived in November 2018 and Mothershead took them to his house. Her first night in the US, Mothershead sexually assaulted her, according to the complaint.

For the next few weeks, he threatened to deport the woman and her son unless they cleaned the house, which was filthy and filled with garbage, according to the court record. He wouldn't give them food andd water unless they complied.

Police said Mothershead cooked an elaborate Thanksgiving dinner, but did not let the woman or her son eat any of it because "Thanksgiving is for Americans" and they were not American.

“He just wants me to serve them," the woman's son told investigators.

She told officers she felt like a slave and eventually called police in January 2019.

Mothershead was charged last month with two counts of human trafficking and one count of sexual assault. The courts released high school teacher on bail.

“I did none of these things,” Mothershead told WTMJ. “They’re all lies.”

"My client is in shock. He vehemently is going to defend himself and fight these charges. He's angry that these charges have been made against him. And, that there is not a shred of evidence in any of it. And he feels that he's been victimized at this point by her," he said.

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The Philippines is a major source of exploited domestic workers in the US

The story by Alex Tizon, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, entitlted "My Family's Slave," was the last story by the respected reporter and although it stained his reputation but -- as he intended -- it also aimed a spotlight on the issue of human trafficking. 

The story published in The Atlantic in 2017, was a domestic worker they called "Lola" (Tagalog for Grandmother) for decades, how she cooked for them, cleaned house, and raised the Tizon children without pay and suffered cruel physical punishment. 

"She lived with my family for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings, and cooked and cleaned from dawn to dark — always without pay," Tizon writes in the cover story in The Atlantic. "I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized she was my family's slave."

The story published after the author's death went viral at the expense of Tizon's sterling reputation in the journalistic community. It also brought out into the open the dark secret more common than the Filipino American community would like to admit.

GRAPHIC BY SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

Every year, hundreds of Filipino workers are trafficked to the US to work in servitude and debt bondage. The problem isn’t confined to the underworld. It plays out daily in the homes of wealthy expats, diplomats and wealthy people investing in US businesses as a means to safeguard their money.

“Human Trafficking at Home: Labor Trafficking of Domestic Workers” details the plight of nannies, house cleaners, and home health aides, and offers detailed solutions to plug the gaping holes that currently exist in legal protections for this mostly women of color workforce. 

The report, released at the end of July, showed most victims were female adults originally from other countries, including the Philippines – 100 workers – followed by Mexico (60), the US (33), India (21) and Colombia (20). There were also 11 from Indonesia.

The vulnerability of workers from the Philippines was laid bare last year, when the South China Morning Post reported on Filipino workers who were victims of labor trafficking in the US. Some had fallen prey to bogus jobs and many ended up trapped in the households of both Americans and expatriates, including diplomats and officers of international organisations.

In advertisements seeking workers on the internet and India-based newspapers, an Indian American couple from Stockton, California lured poor South Asians by making false claims regarding the wages and the duties of employment. Then, once the workers arrived at the the couple's Stockton residence, the couple forced them to work 18 hours a day with limited rest and nourishment. Few of them were paid any wages. 


During their trial earlier this year where they were found guilty, it was learned that the couple kept their domestic workers from leaving, and induced them to keep working for them, by threatening them, by creating an atmosphere of fear, control, and disempowerment, and at times by physically hitting or burning them. When a victim pushed back or said she wanted to leave, it got worse.

Nannies, house cleaners, home health aides, and other domestic workers frequently labor for extremely low pay, sometimes in conditions so abusive it amounts to exploitation and human trafficking, according to a report released July 24 by Polaris and the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA). 

“Domestic workers do the work that makes all work possible. Yet they work in a ‘wild west’ environment where working conditions are based on the good will of their employer rather than a set standard. This creates a breeding ground for exploitation, including labor trafficking,” said Ai-jen Poo, NDWA Executive Director. 

The federal Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, introduced in Congress by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-CA, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-WA, on July 15th, would take important steps toward providing these workers the rights they need, as would significant changes to regulations governing temporary employment visas for immigrant workers. 

“[Domestic workers] provide essential care and support to aging parents, people with disabilities, children, and homes,” Harris said in a statement announcing the bill. “However, our nation’s domestic workers have not been afforded the same rights and benefits as nearly every other worker, and it’s time we change that.”

GRAPHIC BY SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

The highest number of labor trafficking cases reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, almost 23 percent, involved domestic workers. This is likely a small fraction of what is really happening as human trafficking in all its forms is notoriously underreported. Workers were often controlled through the withholding of earnings, misrepresentation of the job, excessive working hours, and emotional abuse. According to NDWA, 67 percent of surveyed domestic workers indicated their job expectations were only covered during informal conversations, with 74 percent saying they could not decline taking on more work.

FOR MORE INFO: Click here to read “Human Trafficking at Home: Labor Trafficking of Domestic Workers.” Additionally, Polaris has created a data fact sheet, a guide for families who hire domestic workers, and an overview of what makes certain situations instances of labor trafficking. 

“The importance of domestic workers to the functioning of our economy as a whole—let alone the functioning of our individual households—cannot be overstated,” said Lillian Agbeyegbe, Polaris’s learning and impact manager and the report’s author. “Yet, too often we learn about cases where someone has been held as a virtual slave in a home for years on end, and we are always shocked and surprised. We shouldn’t be. It is long past time to recognize that caring for our loved ones and our homes is real, vital work and that the people who do it deserve fair wages, decent working hours and the legal protections that can keep them from being trafficked.”

“The National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, a 21st-century framework to bring dignity and respect to domestic workers, is part of a bigger solution to ensure that the trafficking of domestic workers ends once and for all.”

GRAPHIC BY SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

Other findings of the report:

• 85% of domestic worker trafficking survivors report having pay withheld or being paid well below minimum wage

• 81% have lived in abusive living conditions

• 80% have been tricked with false or otherwise deceptive contracts

• 78% have had employers threaten to report them for deportation if they complain

• 77% report having their movements restricted or monitored by their employers

• 75% experience isolation from the outside world, with employers cutting off access to communication

• 74% report having experienced emotional or verbal abuse by their employer

• 73% report working excessive overtime, more than 48 hours per week

• 66% report having experienced physical or sexual abuse, either by their employer or a family member of their employer

• 62% report having their passports or other ID taken away from them by employers

• 45% report being in fear of physical harm if they were to try to leave their employment situation

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Couple found guilty of trafficking victims from India and Nepal

ILLUSTRATION

An Indian American couple from Stockton has been found guilty to the charges of forced labor of workers from India and Nepal.
After an 11-day trial, a federal jury found Satish Kartan, 45, and his wife, Sharmistha Barai, 40, guilty on March 14 of conspiracy to obtain forced labor and two counts of obtaining forced labor. 

Satish Kartan, 45, and his wife Sharmistha Barai, 45, took advantage of overseas workers, forcing them to work without pay, physically abusing them and threatening them of negative repercussions if they tried to leave, Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband said.

“Kartan and Barai did not simply fail to pay victims for their work,” said Sean Ragan, Special Agent in Charge of the Sacramento FBI Field Office. “They deprived them of their dignity and robbed them of their federally-protected civil rights."

Human trafficking victims flew from India and Nepal to testify against the couple.

During the trial, it was revealed that between February 2014 and October 2016, Kartan and Barai hired workers from overseas to perform domestic labor in their home in Stockton. 

In advertisements seeking workers on the internet and India-based newspapers, the defendants made false claims regarding the wages and the duties of employment. Then, once the workers arrived at the defendants’ Stockton residence, the couple forced them to work 18 hours a day with limited rest and nourishment. Few of them were paid any wages. 

The defendants kept their domestic workers from leaving, and induced them to keep working for them, by threatening them, by creating an atmosphere of fear, control, and disempowerment, and at times by physically hitting or burning them. When a victim pushed back or said she wanted to leave, it got worse.

According to evidence presented at trial, the defendants struck one worker on multiple occasions. Barai threatened to kill her and throw her bones in the garbage, backhanded her across the face for talking back, and slammed her hands down on a gas stove, causing her to suffer first and second degree burns on her hands from the flames. 

The defendants also threatened several other victims to coerce them to keep working, including by telling the victims they would report them to police or immigration authorities if they tried to leave. 

Throughout the victims’ time in the defendants’ home, they were deprived of sleep and food. The defendants subjected the victims to verbal abuse and harassment in an effort to intimidate them into continuing to provide labor and services.

Kartan and Barai are scheduled to be sentenced on June 6. Each defendant faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. 

“Human trafficking is a disgraceful and unacceptable crime. The defendants in this case took advantage of overseas workers, forcing them to work without pay, physically abusing them, and threatening negative repercussions if they tried to leave,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband. “The Justice Department will continue to investigate and vigorously prosecute human traffickers in order to bring justice to victims.”

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Sunday Read: Arrest of NFL owner arrested at Asian spa shines spotlight on sex trafficking

Patriots owner Robert Kraft has denied any guilt.

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Views From the Edge

When the Super Bowl 50 was held at Levi Stadium in San Jose in 2016, my county's Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force was briefed on the expected rise in sex trafficking and labor trafficking that occurs around the country's biggest sporting event.

With the other anti-human trafficking agencies around the San Francisco Bay Area, we developed a strategy and raised awareness of the problem. One of the most important things accomplished was changing the mainstream media's perception of the women simply by changing the words "prostitutes" to "victims" and "pimps" to "exploiters."

This issue came up again this week when NFL Patriots’ owner, Robert Kraft, was arrested for soliciting sex at a Florida spa under police investigations for its alleged sex trafficking operation, reports Business Insider.

According to TC Palm, the spa — Orchids of Asia Day Spa — is one of ten spas and massage parlors that were shut down following the discovery that they were trafficking Asian women into prostitution. Investigators found semen in the trash allegedly belonging to the spa, and a health inspector found some women sleeping in the massage parlor.

TC Palm also reported that investigators discovered online postings that they say prove the spa, located in Jupiter, Florida, was offering sexual services and massage body rubs for pay.

After receiving a warrant to install surveillance cameras in the spa, officers found footage of men groping women and receiving oral sex from the victims at the establishment.
The women working at the massage parlor appeared to be living at the business, according to a Jupiter Police Department probable cause affidavit, a sign that their movement may have been restricted.

Vero Beach Police Chief David Currey said during a news conference that many of these women were victims from China who were on temporary work visas anticipating full-time, legitimate work, only to be forced into “sexual servitude.” They have rescued six female victims from China, who don’t speak any English.

“These girls are there all day long, into the evening. They can’t leave and they’re performing sex acts,” he said. “Some of them may tell us they’re OK, but they’re not.”

The three women arrested in the alleged sexual trafficking operations are Hua Zhang, 58, Ruimei Li, 49, and Lei Wang, 39. According to various sources, including Business Insider and TC Palm, approximately 165 to 173 men were charged with crimes related to the ring.

The Jupiter Police Detective wrote, “Under the name Orchids of Asia Day Spa, several posting were located from February 2015 to March 2018. The postings detailed visits involving Asian females providing sexual acts, as well as massage/body rubs in exchange for payment.”

Sex trafficking accounted for 6,081 of the more than 8,500 reported cases of human trafficking in the United States in 2017, according to statistics from the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

The sex rings, such as the massage parlors in the Florida case, are often associated with criminal organizations in their home countries. The women and their families are indebted to the criminal operations. If the sex ring the women are a part of is broken up, they cannot return to their home countries without fear of retribution.

U.S.-based gangs find sex trafficking more lucrative than dealing in drugs because the women are used and abused over and over again, whereas drugs are single-use products. No hard figure is available for the underground operation. Estimates put  sex trafficking in the U.S. from $3 billion to $9.5 billion.By identifying the women as victims, instead of putting the women behind bars, the women can be offered service and assistance.

If the women engaged in sex acts are charged as human trafficking victims they could be subjected to deportation or prosecution. But if they are designated as victims, they will be eligible for T visas, a visa solely designated for human trafficking victims. There are 5,000 T visas available every year.

If the women has not committed any other crimes, a T visa recipient can apply for permanent residence after three years, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website.

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Man guilty of smuggling 400 people into the U.S. from India

A guilty plea from an Indian national revealed an elaborate, transnational human smuggling pipeline from India to the United States that smuggled at least 400 people through Puerto Rico.

Yadvinder Singh Bhamba, 60, an Indian national, pleaded guilty Jan. 18 to one count of conspiracy and 15 counts of smuggling aliens to the United States for profit before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sivia Carreño-Coll of the District of Puerto Rico. 

Carreño-Coll has recommended that District Judge Carmen C. Cerezo accept the guilty plea. Bhamba was charged in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in the District of Puerto Rico on March 15, 2017.

According to court documents, since 2013, Bhamba had a leadership role in a human smuggling conspiracy operating out of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, India and elsewhere. As part of the conspiracy, Bhamba personally assisted around 400 people to illegally enter the U.S. between 2013 and 2015. He also oversaw and directed co-conspirators operating out of the Caribbean.

Bhamba and other members of the conspiracy made flight arrangements for aliens to travel from India through other countries – including Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Iran, Panama, Venezuela, Belize, and Haiti – to the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic was used as a staging area, where aliens were housed before being transported to the United States. 

The organization brought groups of aliens from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico or Florida by boat. Once the aliens reached Puerto Rico or Florida, they were picked up  and taken to stash houses until flights could be arranged to California, New York, or elsewhere in the United States. Bhamba and others arranged for fraudulent identifications for some aliens to use in the United States.

The boat trips organized by Bhamba and his co-conspirators were perilous. Boat captains used old, damaged, cracked, unlicensed, overcrowded, and unsafe boats to make the journey. In at least one instance, an alien died in a boat on his way to the United States.

At times, the smugglers would take passports from the aliens during their journeys, physically assault them, and threaten their families to collect money. The clients paid between $30,000 and $85,000 to be smuggled from India to the United States. From at least 2013 to 2016, human smuggling was Bhamba’s primary source of income.

After authorities intercepted a vessel transporting clients from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico, resulted in the detention of 15 clients in the summer of 2016, Bhamba was arrested in the Dominican Republic in August 2017, and thereafter transferred to Puerto Rico.

A sentencing hearing before Judge Cerezo is scheduled for April 23, 2019.

Man arrested for smuggling undocumented Bangladeshi over Mexico border

A Bangladeshi national residing in Monterrey, Mexico, was arrested Friday (Nov. 30) on arrival at George Bush Intercontinental Airport to face a criminal indictment for his role in a scheme to smuggle undocumented Bengladeshi into the United States via Mexico.

The unsealed indictment issued in the Laredo Division of the Southern District of Texas alleges that from March 2017 to August 2018, Moktar Hossain, 30, conspired to bring and brought 14 Bangladeshi nationals to the United States at the Texas border in exchange for a fee.  Hossain operated out of Monterrey, Mexico, where he maintained a hotel that housed aliens before they were transported to the U.S. border by drivers paid by Hossain. 

 “Smugglers are driven by simple greed with no thought for human compassion.  HSI continues to work with our law enforcement partners to maintain the integrity of our border and the safety of our communities.” said Special Agent in Charge Shane M. Folden of of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Hossain was presented Dec. 1 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dena Hanovice Palermo in the Southern District of Texas for his initial appearance.  At the hearing, Judge Palermo ordered that Hossain be held pending transfer to Laredo for further criminal proceedings.

Bangladesh is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking, according to a report from the U.S. State Department. Some Bangladeshi men and women who migrate willingly to work in the Middle East, Southern and East Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States face conditions indicative of forced labor. 

The investigation is being conducted under the Extraterritorial Criminal Travel Strike Force (ECT) program, a joint partnership between the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and HSI.  

The ECT program focuses on human smuggling networks that may present particular national security or public safety risks, or present grave humanitarian concerns. 

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Texas couple sentenced for labor exploitation

A TEXAS COUPLE was sentenced to six months in federal prison for a scheme that involved subjecting a Cambodian immigrant to indentured servitude to pay off a family debt, U.S. attorneys announced Aug. 20.

Tyno Keo, 38, and, Phearom Lay, 34, of Nacogdoches, Texas, were sentenced Monday (Aug. 20) in federal court in Beaumont, Texas, after previously pleading guilty to alien harboring for financial gain.

U.S. District Court Judge Ron Clark for the Eastern District of Texas sentenced Keo and Lay to six months incarceration followed by two years of supervised release.  Clark also ordered the defendants to pay $5,000 each in fines and $41,024.31 in joint restitution.

According to court documents, between September 2012 and May 2013, the defendants harbored the victim and required her to work long hours for little pay performing childcare, cleaning their home, and as an employee at their business, the Donut Palace. 

The scheme started in Cambodia, where Lay’s sister owed the defendants $50,000 for shared family medical expenses. To satisfy her debt, Lay’s sister arranged for the victim to obtain a temporary tourist visa and travel from Cambodia to the United States to work for the defendants. As a result, the $50,000 debt was transferred to the victim. 

Once the victim arrived in the U.S., the Texas couple took possession of her passport and visa, and continued to harbor and employ her after her visa expired in December 2012. The defendants paid the victim $1,000 a month for her labor and withheld a portion of it to repay the purported $50,000 debt.

“The defendants violated immigration laws and exploited a vulnerable individual who lacked immigration status, requiring her to work long hours for little pay,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. “This Justice Department will not tolerate this type of immigration and labor exploitation, and is committed to aggressively pursuing and prosecuting individuals who engage in such crimes.”