Experts say human trafficking is a huge global problem that has been increasingly woven into America’s criminal landscape, but the number of trafficking arrests lag far behind the estimated number of victims.
In fact, in Macon, where police say signs of human trafficking exist, there hasn’t been a single arrest.
The U.S. Department of State estimates up to 17,500 people are newly trafficked into the United States annually, but Bureau of Justice statistics report only 1,229 incidents were reported nationwide by trafficking task forces between January 2007 and September 2008. In that time span, only 45 suspects were actually sentenced for the crime.
That dearth of arrests, officials say, doesn’t mean trafficking victims aren’t in places like Macon but instead illustrates the complexity of those investigations, which are made more difficult by several factors — none more damaging than the lack of victim cooperation.
‘She was scared of the people holding her’
Over three days in July 2008, undercover officers with the Macon Police Department targeted 13 massage parlors in a second set of stings that year, raiding and making arrests at Tokyo Health Spa, Ultimate Spa, VIP Spa & Relaxation, Q Spa and All-American Spa & Massage. With assistance from U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement agents, investigators arrested 11 women and one man, an employee of All-American Spa.
But there was one woman, a Chinese national of Korean descent in her early 30s, whom investigators picked up but did not arrest. Her name was never released to the media, and police didn’t file charges against her. The reason, Macon police Lt. Kelly Monroe said, is because investigators suspected she was a victim of human trafficking.
“We’ve got to be careful on that account because we don’t want to criminalize the victim,” he said. “That’s why we didn’t release her name. It was to protect her.”
Instead, she was turned over to Tapestri Inc., an Atlanta-based organization that helps human trafficking victims. With a police officer, colleague and interpreter present, Tapestri caseworker Alia El-Sawi interviewed the woman.
“The reason we identified her as a victim and enrolled her in our program was the fact that she was very fearful. You could tell she was scared of the people holding her,” El-Sawi said. “She mentioned that there were threats of deportation, that she owed a debt and she felt like she could not pay off this debt. It appeared that one of the traffickers was in charge of holding the client’s (identification) documents. It’s to show them, ‘You can’t just leave us that easily.’ ’’
Behind closed doors
The federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act defines human trafficking as the use of “force, fraud or coercion” to keep someone against their will for their labor, services or commercial sex acts. Anyone induced into performing commercial sex acts as a minor — under the age of 18 — is also a victim of trafficking.
Officials say proving a person has been trafficked often boils down to their own testimony, which a victim can be reluctant to provide out of fear.
El-Sawi, who now works for ICE, the arm of the federal Department of Homeland Security that investigates human trafficking, interviewed the alleged Macon victim for more than two hours before earning her trust.
“She was very, very afraid that information would get back to her boyfriend, because they were planning to get married,” El-Sawi said, noting that the woman’s boyfriend was not aware she had worked as a prostitute. “There was some kind of shame or humiliation attached for her to do the work she was doing.”
The woman told El-Sawi she answered a newspaper advertisement in her home country that promised legitimate work in the United States. Instead, for the next five years, she said she was forced to work in various illicit massage parlors from Chicago to Macon. She lived in the parlor, and when she was allowed to leave, she told El-Sawi she was accompanied by an escort.
She told investigators she was not paid directly. The money would be held by the “mama-san,” usually an older woman responsible for running the parlor. A couple times a week, the alleged victim told El-Sawi, a man came to collect money from the mama-san.
There were other women trapped in similar circumstances, she told El-Sawi. But before officials could build a human trafficking case, the woman disappeared. She hasn’t been in touch with Tapestri since.
“These massage spa cases are the most difficult to deal with,” El-Sawi said, noting that victims worry their families will learn that they’ve been prostituted, which could embarrass the family and result in the victim being further ostracized.
Monroe said, “One thing that’s really difficult, in a case like that, if you don’t have the evidence and you don’t have the cooperation, it’s difficult to prosecute.”
Monroe said evidence of human trafficking is even harder to come by because of the complicated nature of the crime.
“I’d have to say almost 90 to 95 percent of the employees of these businesses aren’t from around here. They’re from out of the country,” he said. “It’s my experience that they’re being moved around town to town. They spend several weeks to maybe a month or so and they’re moved on to another location. That’s why it’s hard to prosecute people, because they’re here one day, and they might be gone next week.”
Sir Streeter is an U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent whose team assisted police during the July 2008 raids.
“We know that trafficking does exist,” Streeter said. “Women do disappear.”
Law enforcement also faces similar barriers when dealing with victims of domestic trafficking.
During the same set of Macon raids that uncovered the alleged victim of international trafficking, Macon police arrested 17-year-old Rhama Neisler, an American. At the time, officers ICE agents were only checking for illegal immigrants. They were not aware she was under 18 and therefore a trafficking victim according to federal law.
Streeter said by the time he learned of Neisler’s age, she was already gone.
“If we’d known, we would’ve sought prosecution,” Streeter said, adding that ICE agents have been looking for that young woman since they learned of her situation.
In August 2009, Neisler was arrested with four others in Statesboro during a drug raid, Ogeechee Judicial Circuit assistant District Attorney Barclay Black said. The case was taken over by federal prosecutors and is still pending, he said.
Investigators: Trafficking cases take lot of time
Whether domestic or international trafficking, each case requires a lot of work and resources, said Sgt. Donna Chambers of the Atlanta Police Department.
As an example, Chambers said, Atlanta’s Human Trafficking Task Force needed eight months to investigate Jimmie Lee Jones, who ran a “one-man operation” under the name of “Mike Spade,” forcing about 30 women into sex slavery by posing as an entertainment agent. According to a news release from the Justice Department, Jones was sentenced to 15 years in prison on federal charges of conspiring to engage in sex trafficking and transporting young women across state lines for purposes of prostitution. His prison sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release as well as paying $60,600 in restitution to six of the victims.
As big as the Jones bust was, Chambers said massage parlors and spas involve many more people and take much more time, effort and resources.
“When you’re dealing with the spas, those investigations could go on for two or three years,” Chambers said.
She added that Georgia’s district attorneys aren’t as familiar with the state’s human trafficking laws and are still learning how to prosecute those cases.
During surveillance on Atlanta spas, investigators there observed a man who went “from parlor to parlor” collecting money. When the women were permitted to leave, they were driven around by an escort, she said.
“We were able to find out that they were being kept at the parlor, sleeping,” Chambers said. “A lot of the girls are switching from parlor to parlor.”
However, despite all the efforts of the Atlanta task force, Chambers said authorities were never able to make a big trafficking bust on the massage parlors because neither the mama-sans, the “taxi” or the man who picked up the money were “the main guy.”
“When you’re dealing with local (officials), they like to see numbers of arrests, not necessarily numbers of victims. Our biggest thing was victims,” she said, adding that the task force “rescued many girls from trafficking.”
Atlanta’s Human Trafficking Task Force was funded for three years by the federal government and helped lead to the formation of a new multi-agency task force with a primary focus of stopping child prostitution and trafficking.
Given Macon’s proximity to Atlanta, which has consistently been ranked by officials as one of the top five cities for human trafficking abuses, Chambers said she thinks trafficking is “most definitely” happening in Macon.
“The rural areas are going to get hit, mainly because police aren’t looking for it,” she explained. “The biggest problem is awareness. (Police) just don’t know what to look for.”
Chambers said investigators need to ask some basic questions: Are the women free to come and go as they please? Who keeps their money? Do they pay room and board to live in the parlor or spa? Is there coercion?
Kevin Bales is the author of “The Slave Next Door,” a book on human trafficking in America, and president of Free the Slaves, an international anti-trafficking organization.
He said he thinks Macon “has all the earmarks” of a community with human trafficking, specifically the city’s location on three interstates and the high number of massage parlors, which peaked at nearly 20 two years ago. Like Chambers, he said the problem is a lack of awareness.
“People don’t know what they’re seeing,” he said, explaining the same can be said for officers as well as average residents.
Most states, including Georgia, have their own anti-trafficking laws in place, but Bales said, “we have yet to train the police. We put no resources to this.”
Task forces like the one in Atlanta are rare, he said. There are roughly the same number of homicides a year in America as there are new trafficking victims, Bales said, but the difference is nearly every police department in the country has at least one homicide detective, if not an entire unit. As a result, he said, there are approximately 45,000 officers nationally who are specially trained to investigate homicides compared to only about 50 officers trained to investigate human trafficking.
But, he said, recognizing trafficking isn’t difficult.
“It can be asking a question as simple as ‘Do you know where you are?’ ’’ he said, “because oftentimes they don’t even know the name of the city they’re in.”
A familiar problem
Still, the Macon Police Department’s Monroe said, the problem is the same: finding evidence and building a case. Some of that takes experience.
“As of a couple of years ago, it wasn’t a perceived issue or a threat,” Monroe said. “As we’re doing these, we’re learning more and more about how these businesses run.”
He said he doesn’t want to compromise future operations by revealing too much.
Since 2007, Macon police have made 41 massage parlor arrests — mostly prostitution related — and have seen several of the spas close.
The July 2008 raids, which produced the two suspected victims of domestic and international human trafficking, were the last time either ICE or Tapestri was involved in person with investigations in Macon, Monroe said. He said he hopes to work with ICE and Tapestri again.
Ken Smith, who heads the ICE Office of Investigations in Atlanta, wouldn’t confirm whether his agents are investigating in Macon or have plans to.
“We’ve got active investigations going in that industry (massage parlors) throughout the state,” he said. “Trafficking is a concern in those businesses, because there is usually a significant amount of trafficking involved.”
Monroe said the investigations may be difficult for Macon police — especially since his division is responsible for all vice crimes — but that won’t keep officers from moving forward.
“No, we don’t have anything that we’re going to prosecute anyone on,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that down the road that something isn’t going to happen. We’re still looking for it.”
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