Thread: CA:Slavery thriving in secret

Slavery thriving in secret
By Tony Castro and Harrison Sheppard, Staff Writers
Article Last Updated: 03/15/2008 09:20:02 PM PDT


A young Asian woman arrives in Southern California with the promise of a restaurant job and a generous invitation to live for free in her employer's home as she acclimates to her new world.

"I couldn't believe it. I thought I was living the American dream," authorities said Thonglim Khamphiranon told friends in her native Thai language.

But the promise of $240 a month to work in a Thai restaurant in the San Fernando Valley turned out to be a nightmare.

Her passport was confiscated, Khamphiranon later told activists battling human trafficking, and her ties to the outside world were cut. For six years in the late 1990s, she slaved up to 18 hours a day both at her employer's restaurant and at the woman's home, where Khamphiranon slept on the floor and served her boss on her knees.

It happened not in some ethnic Third World pocket of Los Angeles but in an upscale neighborhood in Woodland Hills.

Khamphiranon had become a victim in the estimated $9 billion global industry of human trafficking.

"If it can happen in Woodland Hills, it can happen anywhere," said Kay Buck, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, an organization that aids victims of the modern-day slave trade.

While Khamphiranon's case is a decade old, experts say California has grown into the heart of an underground, multimillion-dollar human-trafficking industry in which people are coerced into hard labor
or the sex trade through force or fraud, according to a recent 18-month government study.
Golden State lawmakers have begun taking new steps to try to curtail the activity.

A proposal introduced recently by the state Senate president pro tem-elect, Darrel Steinberg, D-Sacramento, asks businesses to do more to help eliminate human trafficking.

The bill asks retailers and manufacturers to develop and implement policies on how they will comply with federal laws to eliminate slavery and human trafficking.

"Human trafficking and slavery are growing international businesses for the monsters who practice it," said Jim Evans, a spokesman for Steinberg.

"In (Senate Bill) 1649, Sen. Steinberg will raise awareness among businesses and consumers that forced labor - whether in America or abroad - should have no place in our economy."

The move comes as a report by a 19-member task force of the California Alliance to Combat Trafficking and Slavery found that California has become a top destination for human traffickers.

"The state's extensive international border, its major harbors and airports, its powerful economy and accelerating population, its large immigrant population and its industries make it a prime target for traffickers," the task force report says.

Tens of thousands of people - most of them women and girls from Thailand and Mexico, according to federal officials - are illegally trafficked each year into the United States, where they are forced to work as prostitutes, servants in private homes and laborers in sweatshops.

In the past decade, the issue has aroused passions among activists as well as authorities who have poured money and manpower into fighting a war against human trafficking that surprisingly is as murky and convoluted as the battles against drugs and arms-smuggling.

According to the California report issued in December - and Los Angeles' own 2005 report on the issue - law enforcement officials have yet to quantify the scope of the problem.

"The nature of the crime - that it is underground - makes it as difficult to quantify and identify as to fight," said Buck, a board member of the task force that produced the report.

Compounding the issue is the fact that many victims are reluctant to come forward because of threats by traffickers to harm their families or to get the victims deported to intolerable conditions in homelands they fled.

Since 2000, authorities have identified about 1,500 victims of human trafficking in the United States, a far cry from the 50,000 a year estimated in a CIA report.

The problem persists although the federal government has marshaled more than $150 million and 42 Justice Department task forces nationwide to fight it.

"We know it's an international problem, but we honestly don't know the extent - the number of victims," said Michael A. Smith of The Salvation Army in Los Angeles, among private organizations that are aggressively combating human trafficking.

The battle has gained new recognition in Sacramento during the past three years, as lawmakers have enacted tougher penalties against trafficking and started efforts to pin down the scope of the problem.

California enacted its first major legislation on the issue in 2005, making trafficking a felony and offering more assistance to victims. The law took effect in 2006, but it has been difficult to measure its effect, state officials said. Most trafficking cases are still prosecuted under federal law.

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, who wrote the 2005 legislation, said she is planning next to go after debt bondage - the practice of bringing people to the U.S. and forcing them to work in virtual slavery to pay off their debts.

"We're seeing debt bondage emerging in all kinds of industries in California," Lieber said. "It shouldn't be the case that people are bringing the undocumented here and holding them in forced labor for a profit."

A bill she co-wrote this year would specifically define such activities as a crime.

Migrant farm and construction workers, household employees and workers in motels, restaurants and clothing factories are frequently vulnerable to abuse.

"A lot of people are brought to this country on the promise they'll earn a better life, they'll be able to send money back to their families," said Nancy Matson of the California Attorney General's Office and the chairwoman of the state task force.

"When they get here, it's not what happens. There are lots of promises, lots of deceptions. Their documents are taken away. They live in squalor. They have no freedom to come and go."

A federal bust last month, in which six people were arrested on suspicion of being part of a human smuggling ring in Los Angeles, offers a window into the problem.

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said it involved only people transporting undocumented immigrants into the country, but one of the ringleaders alone had deposited $456,897 into bank accounts over a three-year period.

"We've taken on a monster of many faces. Forced labor, forced prostitution, mail-order brides and child pornography are all forms of this disgusting billion-dollar trade," said City Councilman Tony C rdenas, who has convened a citywide Human Trafficking and Child Prostitution Task Force.

C rdenas' report also highlighted a lack of awareness among community residents, including some in law enforcement, about human trafficking and how victims could be identified.

In recent years, activists such as Sandra Hunnicut of the Los Angeles-based Captive Daughters organization have been trying to raise public awareness of the problem.

"So often, the only way these cases are uncovered is because of the good hearts of good Samaritans," Hunnicut said. "Someone will see something that isn't right and report it."

In fact, in Khamphiranon's case, good Samaritans came to the rescue. A Thai family helped her escape, and the Thai Community Development Center put her in contact with authorities.

Her abuser, Supawan Veerapol, 61, was convicted of charges related to human trafficking and served six years of an eight-year prison sentence before her release last year.

"Human trafficking is modern-day slavery," said state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, whose 23rd District includes parts of the San Fernando Valley and who has become a leading anti-human trafficking crusader in the country.

"(It) is becoming one of the most important human rights issues of the 21st century."

http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_8588926

We're seeing debt bondage emerging in all kinds of industries in California," Lieber said. "It shouldn't be the case that people are bringing the undocumented here and holding them in forced labor for a profit."

They've been doing this.... and that's all the more reason to have people checked and things followed up on. They had reports of this in Florida 21 years ago. Believe it or not, Disney was one of the big problem businesses with thier "guest worker" program. They'd promise training and they'd bring people in.....ya...gave them a bed and they were allowed out to work...that's all. No other contact except for the other "guest workers" they bunked with. There were reports from just about every ag industry going and it was pretty brutal. They'd pay them and then deduct room and board and ungodly high prices for food etc so they never made any money.

Allow uncontrolled illegal immigration and what else do you think will happen? It's happening in the UK as well. Unfortunatly so much has to do with prostitution and porn and child porn. A huge underground.......