CA Governor signs into law new anti-human trafficking legislation

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced today he has signed SB 657by Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) to help eliminate slavery and human trafficking from product supply chains.

“Human trafficking is a terrible crime that goes against basic human rights and everything our country stands for,” said Governor Schwarzenegger. “I am proud that in California, we have enacted some of the toughest laws to punish human traffickers and protect their victims. This legislation will increase transparency, allow consumers to make better, more informed choices and motivate businesses to ensure humane practices throughout the supply chain.”

SB 657 requires major retail sellers and manufacturers doing business in California to disclose their voluntary efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from its direct supply chain for tangible goods offered for sale.

The Governor has long been committed to eliminating the practice of human trafficking and providing protections for victims of illegal trafficking in California, including:

• Signing AB 17 to increase financial penalties on those convicted of human trafficking by 400 percent and allow law enforcement to seize assets connected to traffickers, which can greatly increase the financial loss for traffickers. Half of what is collected in fines and seizures will also be made available to community-based organizations that serve underage victims of human trafficking.

• Enacting legislation to establish human trafficking as a crime and increasing the severity of punishment for those that commit or benefit from this crime. One of the bills, AB 22, made human trafficking in California a felony punishable by up to eight years in state prison.

• Signing legislation to grant further rights to victims of human trafficking and establishing a pilot program to provide standardized training curricula on the sexual exploitation of minors.

• Enacting AB 1278 which prohibits contracts that siphon future wages in exchange for the costs of transporting an individual to the U.S.

• Signing a joint statement in 2006 with then-Mexican President Vicente Fox committing to cooperate on border security solutions including combating human trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Signing SB 1569 to extend crucial support services like Medi-Cal and Healthy Families to victims of human trafficking.  

• Urging greater cooperation among U.S.-Mexico Border States at the XXVI Annual Border Governor’s Conference to put a stop to this human rights violation and increase awareness through a policy forum hosted by First Lady Maria Shriver, entitled "Human Trafficking...A Unified Call to Action." The forum featured experts from the U.S. and Mexico, including leaders in the fields of law enforcement, international human rights, victim assistance and human trafficking survivors who discussed the impact human trafficking has had on the border region and the collaborative solutions needed to fight it.

Original Story from gov.ca.gov

Chinese making huge strides in fighting human trafficking

Beijing – Chinese police freed as of 6 September 10,621 women and 5,896 children abducted for human trafficking since the Public Security Ministry launched a crackdown in April last year. Nationwide, police broke up 2,398 human trafficking gangs and arrested 15.673 suspects, state news agency Xinhua reported.
In order to make it easier to find victims and reunite them with their family, police also set up a database that collects DNA samples of victims and their parents. So far, the database has helped 813 children find their biological parents through DNA matching, the Ministry said.


China’s zero tolerance policy has led to a heavy crackdown on traffickers. Between January and July, 1,238 people were sentenced to either death, life in prison or at least five years in prison, a spokesperson for the Supreme People's Court said. This is 75 per cent more than last year. However, media reports have not indicated how the crackdown has affected the overall problem.


In recent years, media have reported cases involving the abduction of children and the mentally disabled, eventually forced to work, especially in the brick making industry, after being abducted. Police have freed hundreds of such slaves and determined that their captivity was the result of collusion between businesses and local authorities.


Another widespread form of human trafficking is the buying and selling of newborn children, especially for young couples or childless older couples.


In August, Yang Dong, deputy chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, told that the China Daily that between 30,000 to 60,000 children are reported missing every year, but that it is hard to estimate how many of them are trafficking cases.


The situation is especially troubling for the children of migrant workers, who are often handed over to relatives when parents work far from home or even forced to live alone.


Original Story from SperoNews.com

Human trafficking ring busted in Los Angeles

BALDWIN PARK -- Police have arrested two men accused of human trafficking after 36 suspected illegal immigrants were found inside a Baldwin Park house believed to have been used as a holding cell.

At around 7:00 p.m., officers form the Baldwin Park Police Department say they received a call from an alarmed man claiming to be an illegal immigrant being held against his will.

Arriving officers saw several suspects fleeing the home in the 5000 block of La Rica Road in Baldwin Park.

After an investigation, officers discovered several men, women and one child being held inside the home.

Police believe they had been in the residence for up to one month.

They were smuggled into the country illegally from Mexico and Central America and were being held until family members paid a certain sum of money, Lt. David Reynoso said.

Original Article from KTLA.com

Image from KTLA.com showing officers outside of slave home

Nail salons front for human trafficking in Ohio

What is described as a multimillion-dollar human-trafficking scheme is operating out of nail salons in Ohio, with immigrants from Southeast Asia - many of them illegal - being forced to work as "indentured servants" in exchange for passage to the U.S.

Kevin L. Miller, executive director of the Ohio Board of Cosmetology, said he expects "indictments and arrests" statewide in the next 60 days or so. State and local law-enforcement agencies, the FBI, Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are investigating, he said.

The legal problems involve human trafficking, illegal immigration, identify theft, fraudulent license testing and potential national security threats, said Miller, who added that he could not provide specifics because of the ongoing investigation.

The matter came up at yesterday's meeting of the Ohio Trafficking in Persons Study Commission, convened by Attorney General Richard Cordray.

"It's a huge concern in most jurisdictions around the state of Ohio," Cordray said.

The cosmetology board annually licenses 145,000 people who work in nail shops, hair salons and tanning parlors.

"We're talking just in the state of Ohio about thousands of people who have fraudulently got their licenses," Miller said.

He told the commission that immigrants from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries, often brought illegally to the U.S. for a price, are given "laundered" false identities, including fake high-school diplomas, driver's licenses, immigration papers and other documents.

The employee then becomes an "indentured servant," working for the employer for two years for little or sometimes no money to pay off their debt. Often, the employees are required to live on the premises. The agency documented one case where 16 licensees lived at the same address.

Neither Miller nor Cordray commented specifically about homeland security issues. However, in his report to the commission, Miller referred by means of background to Najibullah Zazi, an al-Qaida operative who plotted to blow up New York subway stations using chemicals found in nail polish remover and hair dye.

The problem of illegal immigrants working in nail salons has cropped up in the past in Ohio and nationwide, but little has been done.

"It's easy to hide in plain sight," Miller said. "If they can get a driver's license, an address, a place where they went to school, they're all set."

The human-trafficking commission also discussed the need for more training for Ohio law-enforcement agencies. A majority of agencies which responded to a 2009 survey doubted their ability to recognize signs of human and labor trafficking; all wanted more training.

Lt. Matt Warren, head of the State Highway Patrol's criminal intelligence unit and a member of the human-trafficking panel, cited two cases in 2009 when training paid off in rescuing underage girls who were likely to become trafficking victims.

He said a trooper stopped an Idaho trucker for speeding near Athens last year and was suspicious about the 17-year-old girl in the passenger seat. Trained to recognize the signs of human trafficking, the trooper began asking questions and found the trucker was a sex offender who met the mentally challenged teenager online, picked her up in Marion and was transporting her when he was stopped for the traffic violation.

Similarly, a seemingly routine stop rescued a 17-year-old Detroit girl who was being trafficked at truck stops in the Lima and Dayton areas.

ajohnson@dispatch.com

Original Article from The Columbia Dispatch

UK says 2,600 women trafficked to brothels

(Reuters) - Almost 10 percent of women working in brothels in England and Wales are migrants who are victims of human trafficking and come mainly from Asia, police said on Wednesday.

A report by the Association of Chief Police Officers into the sexual exploitation of foreign nationals found that 17,000 of the 30,000 women who worked in brothels or other similar premises were migrants

Of these, 2,600 were deemed to have been trafficked, with 2,200 originally from Asia, mainly China. A further 9,200 women were considered to be vulnerable and who might be further victims of trafficking.

The "Setting the Record" report was the result of a year-long study titled Project Acumen, commissioned by ACPO to discover the true extent of trafficking in "off-street prostitution."

"It provides us with a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of how migrant women are involved in prostitution -- how they are influenced, controlled, coerced, exploited and trafficked," said Deputy Chief Constable Chris Eyre.

The government said that in order to tackle the issue it was important they had a better understanding of the problem.

"Human trafficking is a brutal form of organised crime where people are traded as commodities and exploited for profit by criminal gangs," said Immigration Minister Damian Green

"Having any number of people trafficked into the UK is unacceptable, therefore it is vital that we use Acumen to re-focus our efforts both at targeting the criminal gangs that trade in this human misery and in helping victims escape and recover from their ordeal."

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Steve Addison)

Original Article from Reuters UK

FBI busts human trafficking ring in Florida

A 15-year-old Jacksonville runaway is safe and getting therapy after the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office says she spent a month as a sex slave.

Ian Sean Gordan and Melvin Eugene Friedman have been indicted on federal felony counts of selling the 15-year-old girl to customers between February 24 and March 31.

Three other men, Oris Alexander English, Alfredo Martinez Riquene and Phillip Anthony Aiken have been arrested for buying the victim from Gordan and Friedman.

A sixth man, Antonio Ford, is charged with having knowledge of the child exploitation and failing to report the felonies to authorities.

"Such trafficking in the nature of this operation was tanamount to slavery," Sheriff John Rutherford said at a Monday afternoon news conference announcing the indictments. "The victim was forced to engage in acts of prostitution in exchange for money, shelter and drugs."

Police would not elaborate on how the girl became involved with the suspects, but say she was held against her will until she was able to escape and call her mother.

Officials from the FBI believe the girl was held in several different locations around Jacksonville during her month in captivity and say it's possible more arrests are made in connection with this case.

"We had a case some time ago involving juveniles that were trafficked down here from Virginia," Mike Williams with the Sheriff's Office Special Investigations Unit said. "But this is the first local case that we've put together that involves a local citizen. And it's important to point out that human trafficking is not just an international or national problem. It's a local problem. And that's why we're so committed to rooting it out."

Original Article from WOKV.com

Florida woman pleads guilty to charge of sex slavery

LEE COUNTY: A Southwest Florida woman pled guilty to charges relating to sex slavery. NBC2's Stacey Deffenbaugh was the only reporter in court as the woman told the judge what happened.

During the one hour hearing Tuesday, 31-year-old, Naomi Vasquez told the judge she and a co-defendant would give illegal drugs to the victims and make them perform acts of prostitution for money.

Click the links in the "Related Stories" section at the right to read the original article on Vasquez as well other NBC2 articles on sex slavery and human trafficking.
A 19-page plea agreement gives specific details of what happened. Police arrested Vasquez and co-defendant Derek Ned after two undercover operations.

The three victims - all Cape Coral women, ages 27, 25 and 20 - worked with police to set up undercover stings and at the La Quinta Inn in Fort Myers and another location in Bonita Springs.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the defendants were involved in a sex slavery organization that utilized women of Haitian and American descent, forcing them to commit acts of prostitution by threatening the women with serious bodily injury if they did not prostitute themselves.

In court Tuesday, prosecutors outlined the case, saying the women performed as many as 10 acts of prostitution a day.

They received between $150 and $300 and investigators say Vasquez and Ned kept all the money.

The women told police they were afraid to leave because they heard Ned say he was a murderer and he was willing to kill again.

Vasquez is facing 20 years in prison. But in court, prosecutors said they will be recommending the low end the sentence guideline.

As for Derek Ned, prosecutors believe he was the mastermind of the sex slavery business and they will ask for a longer sentence in his case.

By Stacey Deffenbaugh

Original Article from NBC-2