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November 28, 2005

Police target human trafficking
In Indiana, at least 2 inquiries are under way into rings that push people into prostitution, slavery
By Kevin Corcoran
kevin.corcoran@indystar.com

A false promise of a $500-a-week baby-sitting job lured illegal immigrant Marlene Harpi from New York City to Indianapolis four years ago. But when she arrived here, the job turned out to be quite different.

Police say Harpi was held in a Westside Indianapolis brothel and forced to have sex with at least 15 to 20 men a day. Two Hispanic teenage girls, who like Harpi had been recruited from New York, were also prisoners of the prostitution ring.

Police and prosecutors say they suspect such cases of human trafficking, which usually involves forced prostitution or labor, are increasing in Indiana's poorer immigrant communities. They have assembled a task force to help overcome cultural and language barriers so they can prosecute ringleaders and rescue victims.

"We are going to take down as many as we can and move up as high as we can in these organizations," said U.S. Attorney Susan W. Brooks, the top federal prosecutor for 60 counties in Central and Southern Indiana. "It's not something people think of existing anymore, but we know it's out there."

Brooks, while disclosing no details, said at least two investigations are already under way into such human trade, described by some as a form of modern-day slavery.

The Honduran woman's situation, the only publicized case of human trafficking in Indianapolis, illustrates the difficulty of bringing the traffickers to justice.

Harpi escaped after two weeks and went to police. But prosecutors, ill-equipped in 2001 to deal with such an unusual crime, had to drop charges against her captors three years ago. They lost their chief witness after Harpi grew fearful and bolted from the hotel they had housed her in for safekeeping.

Her captors, a ring of illegal immigrants from Colombia and Mexico, were deported on the basis of their residential status.

"This was a classic case of what we're looking for -- but with a different outcome," Brooks said. "If we have a Marlene come forward in the future, we can help her."

Brooks' office will oversee the effort to find and punish human traffickers, working with groups such as customs agents, FBI translators and undercover agents, U.S. marshals, Indianapolis and Marion County police and local prosecutors.

Investigators also will work with nonprofit groups such as Heartland Alliance, a service-based human rights group in Chicago that can provide translators in Chinese, French, Polish and other languages.
A top priority

Brooks' office coordinates other local-federal task forces dealing with mortgage fraud, environmental crimes, gun violence, Internet pornography and terrorism.

Under President Bush, the Justice Department has made rooting out human trafficking a priority nationally and internationally. Aided by a $450,000 federal grant, the local task force already is training police to pick up on clues that illegal immigrants might be part of a trafficking scheme.

Federal authorities usually uncover traffickers when they set out to find them, said Mony Ruiz-Velasco, an attorney for the Midwest Immigration and Human Rights Center, a program of the Heartland Alliance.

"People are surprised by the idea of human trafficking, but a lot of people come up after training to say they've seen something like what we've described," said Ruiz-Velasco, whose group has helped train Indiana investigators.

Marion County will be the initial focus, especially along the Washington Street corridor. But authorities expect to expand the search for brothels and forced manual labor to area counties. Scrutiny will be given to businesses such as nail shops, suburban massage parlors, landscaping and construction companies and ethnic restaurants, according to federal grant applications.

The task force also plans to train hospital emergency room workers, landlords and code enforcement and public health officers to recognize signs of human trafficking so they can notify police.

"An initiative like this can change the culture of law enforcement," said Liz Allison, who administers grants for the Indianapolis Police Department.

One sign that a person is being held captive, officials said, is that they are accompanied by someone who is holding their identification, so they are not free to leave. Another tipoff might occur in a hospital emergency room, for example, when someone shows up with another person who does all the talking, and the first person does not seem free to talk or leave.

Recent news stories that hint at the trafficking problem include the Bureau of Motor Vehicles scandal involving the illegal sale of Indiana driver's licenses to Chinese nationals; immigrant day laborers and workers in Chinese and Mexican restaurants who are forced to work without pay; and the multistate trafficking of truck stop prostitutes, according to IPD.

Indianapolis police also cite the existence of brothels on the Southside in which Spanish is spoken exclusively and the presence locally of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a Hispanic gang that has been known to traffic in drugs and hold people captive as forced labor.
Illegal immigrants can stay

Under federal human trafficking laws, victims are treated as refugees rather than illegal immigrants to be deported.

That's why an additional $500,000 has been requested from the Justice Department to pull together in the Indianapolis area a network of services for victims, including food, clothing and shelter, to win their trust and cooperation in prosecutions.

At the Justice Department's request, The Julian Center, an Indianapolis nonprofit that shelters domestic violence victims, would oversee the grant and coordinate the delivery of medical care, housing, welfare and other benefits, said Ann DeLaney, the center's executive director.

Federal law also makes victims of human trafficking eligible for special "T" work visas that give them a chance for U.S. citizenship in exchange for their cooperation in criminal cases.

"These people come to this country to work," said Gayle L. Helart, the assistant U.S. attorney coordinating the human trafficking task force. "They really want to work. That's an important component of this."

Finding a good-paying job in the United States was Harpi's dream. She told them a woman she met in New York City offered to bring her to Indianapolis for the baby-sitting job.

After Harpi arrived in June 2001, she said, a man told her she would be working instead as a prostitute in a duplex on West 16th Street. Harpi also was taken to a duplex on Sherman Drive to work as a prostitute.

Harpi was warned that if she tried to escape, she would "disappear." She told police one captor slapped her face several times two days after she had arrived from New York because a customer had complained about her.

One night, Harpi said, she escaped after one of her captors left a door unlocked. She gave police enough evidence to search both homes and arrest her captors on charges of criminal confinement and promoting prostitution.

Marion County prosecutors called in the FBI after Harpi ran away, but agents were unable to find her. Barbara Crawford, the prosecutor assigned to the case, said she has been told Harpi went back to her native country.

Prosecutors, believing the case was weak without Harpi, moved in April 2002 to dismiss all charges against her five captors in Marion Superior Court.

"We don't know why she left," said Roger Rayl, a spokesman for Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi. "We think she was worried about being able to continue to provide for her Honduran family."