Hidden Slaves

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5. Implementation and Enforcement of U.S. Laws

Three years after passage of the Trafficking Act, U.S. law enforcement personnel, policymakers, and labor rights advocates are still wrestling with the legal mandates established under the new law. Our research suggests that effective implementation and enforcement of the Trafficking Act will depend on several factors, including training law enforcement officers, particularly at the local level, to identify victims and forced labor operations; improving cooperation and information sharing between federal and state agencies charged with combating forced labor; revising procedures for the handling of survivors; and finding more effective measures for providing survivors with protection, benefits, and compensation.

Identifying Victims

One of the greatest challenges U.S. law enforcement faces is developing the skills to identify victims of trafficking and forced labor. Finding victims, a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Labor said, is "devilishly difficult to do."⁶⁸ There are many reasons why victim identification is complicated. Victims are usually reluctant to approach local police because they fear retribution from their traffickers or "employers." This fear often stems from their experiences with corrupt law enforcement personnel in their countries of origin. Invariably, exploiters play on this fear by warning their captives that U.S. law enforcement is no different. Luis Rivera, an organizer for the California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc.—a group that has assisted the California asparagus workers—observed that abused workers are reluctant to call the police because "they don't trust them."⁶⁹

In some cases, "employers" have given their workers false identities as a means of passing through U.S. immigration. In one case that eventually exposed such a trafficking scheme, Lakireddy Bali Reddy, the California-based sex trafficker, arranged for a man and his sister from his hometown to fraudulently pose as the parents of two teenage sisters so that the two sisters would be allowed to pass through U.S. immigration. Reddy sexually exploited the two teenage sisters until the older sister died of asphyxiation, a result of a blocked exhaust vent in one of his apartments.

Law Enforcement

Law enforcement, particularly at the local level, must develop the capacity to identify not only victims of trafficking and forced labor but the very operations themselves. "Police don't know trafficking when they see it," said Martina Vandenberg, formerly of Human Rights Watch.⁷⁰ Indeed, the problem is so pervasive the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched a federal training program to help investigators working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS),⁷¹ and the Department of Labor detect forced labor operations.

An example from the Reddy case study demonstrates why the DOJ training program is necessary. In 1997 the INS investigated Reddy for potential immigration fraud. The INS investigation team found the real-estate tycoon had committed no crimes. Reddy, said the INS district director, was "a professionally educated gentleman, with widespread corporate interests.... There was nothing to indicate any criminal conduct."⁷²

To date, the Department of Justice has no plans to provide similar training to state and local law enforcement officers.⁷³ Clearly, the sheer number of police departments in the United States—over seventeen thousand—would make such a task daunting. Yet a more targeted approach aimed at training local law enforcement located in areas of the country where forced labor is pervasive could go a long way toward improving detection of these operations. Witness, for example, the forced prostitution case in Florida where local police missed an opportunity to break up the forced prostitution ring simply because they did not know what they were looking for. According to social service providers, police responded to a phone call from one of the female victims by dispatching deputies to an address given to them by the woman caller. When the deputies arrived at the brothel, however, guards managed to dissuade them from carrying through their investigation, and they left without entering the premises. The prostitution ring was only uncovered several months later when a group of women escaped and made their way to the Mexican consulate.

Fragmentation of Law Enforcement

The approach now taken by federal and state agencies to combat forced labor in the United States is fragmentary and inconsistent. This is largely because trafficking is considered a federal crime that must be handled by federal agents. Indeed, until passage of the recent amendments to the Trafficking Act, federal agents had primary authority to certify that a survivor met the definitional threshold to be eligible to receive benefits and protections under the act. This process can be cumbersome and time-consuming and, ultimately, frustrating for the survivor. Likewise, the process of seeking federal certification can involve a great risk to the survivor.

If agents are unwilling to issue such a certification, then the survivor is left exposed. Her trafficker may be aware that she has approached the authorities and seek retribution against her. Without certification, she cannot stay in the United States legally and she faces a grim choice. She must either live in the United States as a permanent undocumented individual, flee to a third country, or risk returning to her home country where the trafficker continues to wield great influence and power.

Not only is the certification process coordinated through the Department of Justice, but the department is also responsible for keeping track of statistics under the act. Federal statistics regarding trafficking cases will not include federal cases that are not appropriately charged, for example, by a federal agency other than DOJ, nor do they include trafficking or forced labor incidents that come to the attention of the state prosecutors. Thus, there is concern among service providers that lack of coordination between the federal government agencies makes it difficult to establish accurate numbers of prosecutions and may prevent survivors from accessing benefits and protection.

A related problem is that local police and state officials unable to identify a forced labor operation necessarily fail to refer such cases to federal agents. This was apparent in the California asparagus case that was never referred to federal law enforcement. JB Farm Labor, the labor contractor who hired the workers and kept them in substandard housing, withheld all but $20 per week of their paychecks to satisfy their transportation "debt" and threatened them with harm if they left .⁷⁴ Yet while these facts are strikingly similar to those of the R&A Harvesting case in Florida, a federal investigation took place only after the workers had filed a civil suit against JB Farms Labor Contractor and Victoria Island Farms. Attorneys for the workers contacted the Department of Labor about the case but did not pursue enforcement when the department could not secure assurances from the immigration authorities that they would not take action against the workers.⁷⁵ Drawn to the case through a newspaper article, the Department of Labor conducted an investigation, but they did so only after the 2000 season was over and the workers were no longer at the site.⁷⁶

Today there are greater protections for survivors of forced labor, largely because of the T visa program and an agreement reached between the Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security which protects undocumented workers from action by immigration officials in connection with labor department investigations. In 1999 the Department of Justice and Department of Labor created the Worker Exploitation Task Force to improve coordination and to increase the prosecution of forced labor cases. In 2001, as required by the Trafficking Act, President George W. Bush created the Inter-Agency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking. The Inter-Agency Task Force includes the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The mandate of this task force is to coordinate and implement executive policy in order to combat trafficking. In March 2003 the task force created a Senior Policy Advisory Group to advise the task force on important policy issues.⁷⁷

There is the hope that this interagency approach will make the process of investigating and adjudicating trafficking and forced labor cases more efficient and less burdensome for survivors. One encouraging sign is the creation of regional task forces under the umbrella of the Worker Exploitation Task Force throughout the United States. These task forces serve as forums for agencies to share information and coordinate approaches to specific trafficking and forced labor cases. A member of the Department of Labor explained why this interagency approach is so important:

If INS is looking at [a forced labor case] they would be looking to deport people. If we are looking at it, we are looking to pay people. If Justice is looking at it, they are looking to put people in jail. Obviously, that's a very unsatisfactory way of attacking the problem. The way you must attack the problem is to do it in an interdisciplinary way . . . (s)o that we can deal with specific cases of slavery or peonage as a whole rather than as separate agencies, so that less slips through the cracks.⁷⁸

Despite this progress, government officials familiar with the work of such task forces believe coordination among members of the task force could be improved. They point to interagency rivalries, different approaches to cases based on agency priorities, and the challenges of coordinating a large number of agencies and participants. Despite these criticisms, most agree that such task forces serve an important function and emphasize that there has been more interagency cooperation around trafficking than most other issues. As one member of the Worker Exploitation Task Force noted: "I frankly think that [the task force] works reasonably well at this point. It could always work better. . . What I've given you is the model. The closer we come to that, the better off we are."⁷⁹

Nongovernmental organization advocates support the idea of greater federal interagency cooperation and information exchange in addressing trafficking and forced labor cases. Advocates believe that greater cooperation will lead to the development of alternative ways of providing victim relief for those cases that are not taken up by federal prosecutors. As Jennifer Stanger, Media and Advocacy Director at the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST), has noted, only three or four of the agency's twenty or thirty trafficking cases have been chosen for federal prosecution. In an interagency scheme, Stanger would like to see the Department of Labor, as a federal enforcement agency, take a greater role in addressing trafficking cases by being able to request benefits and issue certificates of endorsement. "Trafficking," she says, "is as much a labor issue as it is a criminal one." She would like to see other federal agencies such as the Department of Labor "have the ability to confer victim status, especially when a case is rejected for criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice."⁸⁰

Ironically, as awareness about trafficking and forced labor has increased at the level of local law enforcement, new tensions have arisen between state and federal agencies. Victims who cooperate with local authorities are technically eligible for a T visa but run into problems because the Trafficking Act favors documentation of cooperation from federal law enforcement over an endorsement from state officials. The new amendments to the Trafficking Act attempt to make state endorsements equivalent to federal ones but the new law has not yet been implemented.⁸¹ Advocates are watching the certification process carefully. Without access to federal immigration and welfare benefits, victims in state prosecutions are unable to regularize their status and must fall back on state benefits—if available—or private support. The NGO advocate recounted that victims "are surviving on the good will of local citizens to take care of them, and they have no legal status."⁸²

NGO advocates also report that federal officials often refuse to issue endorsements of T visa applications. One service provider attributed this reluctance to the mistaken belief among law enforcement that the benefits are too generous and that "they are giving away a green card" by providing certification.⁸³ Moreover, agents may wait until the Department of Homeland Security has determined that a victim is a legitimate victim of severe trafficking, or until a prosecution has begun, to issue an endorsement, causing victims to wait months before receiving much-needed benefits. Advocates report that for some victims the dependency on federal authorities for immigration relief, compounded by the pain and discomfort of testifying about their experience, does not serve their needs and dissuades them from cooperating with law enforcement.

NGO advocates also note that middle management in federal investigatory agencies often hinders the enforcement of the Trafficking Act by downplaying the severity of crimes involving forced labor. On several occasions such officials have reassigned experienced and knowledgeable investigators to other higher priority crimes. "Think of it like a sandwich," says Jennifer Stanger of CAST. "One slice of the bread is the NGO that has been given funding to do outreach and training and to provide services. The prosecution is the other piece of bread. But the problem is, there is no sandwich meat, which is the investigative part, in the middle. These cases are only as good as the evidence that's been compiled by the investigators."⁸⁴ Advocates note that investigative resources are beginning to be provided but are not yet sufficient.

New Approaches to Law Enforcement

Bringing the needs of victims of trafficking and forced labor into sharp focus and prosecuting their abusers requires a reorientation of all levels of law enforcement as well as an unprecedented degree of coordination between state and federal justice departments. By any standard it is an enormous undertaking but fortunately one that has enjoyed significant support from both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

The Trafficking Act has also helped law enforcement personnel recognize that those ensnared in trafficking and forced labor are victims and not criminals. "One of the important changes in these cases and one of the things that was recognized by the Trafficking Act," says an official from the DOJ section that prosecutes forced labor cases, "was that we need to treat victims as victims. In the past too often we had to view them as criminals or people who were being quickly deported or prosecuted for prostitution....The big change and the thing that has made our work much more successful is that we do treat them as victims."⁸⁵ This approach has paid dividends in a rapid increase, noted earlier, in the number of forced labor cases prosecuted in the past five years.

Key to this increase has been the change in the relationship between law enforcement and victims. Prosecutors understand that to win forced labor cases and appropriately punish offenders requires the trust and cooperation of victims and witnesses. "Obviously, without the cooperation of the victims we can't win cases," says the DOJ spokesman. He added:

So it's of benefit both to the victims but also to law enforcement. I think that's an enormous change. In the past we used to do a raid, lock up the victims and treat them as if they were as guilty as the defendants. Now, I think we try to deal with them much more humanely. We try to give them services, find them shelter and other. It's a much different approach that leads to happier, more cooperative victims. And that, in turn, makes us much more successful.⁸⁶

Our case study of the Thai domestic worker trafficked into the western United States illustrates the DOJ official's point. Khai cooperated with law enforcement and testified against her former employer. She said the behavior of the federal prosecutor in her case made all the difference: "The U.S. Attorney gave me a new life. He delivered me, like a doctor delivering a baby, to a new life."⁸⁷ For Khai, prosecution served to reveal the truth about her perpetrator. She hoped that coming forward to testify would help others. "I had to fight," she said. "I had to tell the truth, to tell what happened."⁸⁸ Because of her experience, Khai believes "justice does exist. I have a different view now on law enforcement, the courts, immigration, and prosecutors."⁸⁹ As a result of her cooperation with federal prosecutors, Khai received a T visa in June 2003 which enabled her to stay and work in the United States. She is now looking forward to being reunited with her son, whom she has not seen in over ten years.

Treatment of Survivors

Much of the criticism of the United States' approach to forced labor stems from the link between prosecution of perpetrators and serving victims. According to one top-level federal prosecutor, attitudes among prosecutors toward forced labor victims vary from "humanitarian"—where the focus is to alleviate the suffering of the victim—to "instrumental"—where victims are seen as necessary to win criminal cases. Under the Trafficking Act prosecutors are pivotal to meeting the needs of victims for social services and fulfilling the criminal enforcement aims of the statute. Yet these aims can at times clash, leaving victims unacknowledged or underserved, perpetrators unindicted, and service providers and law enforcement agents feeling frustrated.

An illustration of this problem is apparent in the case of the Florida citrus workers. In May 2000 a Florida based NGO, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), began investigating the plight of migrant workers employed by R&A Harvesting. CIW got involved after R&A Harvesting employees accused the driver of a van transporting migrant workers of "stealing" workers and severely beat the driver. Shortly thereafter CIW urged the Department of Justice to investigate what seemed to be a clear case of forced labor in Florida's citrus groves. Federal investigators, however, initially declined to pursue the case because, without adequate resources to investigate, they felt they could not prove involuntary servitude without victims who would be willing to testify. In response, CIW sent one of its own members to the camp, undercover, to document abuses. Even with this evidence, prosecutors wanted other witnesses, all of whom were trapped in the camp and terrified to leave for fear of what their boss might do to them. A year after the assault on the van driver, in April 2001, several CIW members went to the labor camp and handed out cards with the group's telephone number. The next day four workers called the organization asking for help to escape. Within hours, two cars driven by members of the group met the workers just outside the camp. The workers quickly jumped in and ducked down under the seats, too afraid to sit up until they were twenty miles away from their captors. The escaped captives agreed to be witnesses. With their help, prosecutors convicted Ramos, his two brothers, and a cousin of a host of charges, including conspiracy to hold workers in indentured servitude, extortion, and firearms charges.⁹⁰ Despite a successful resolution, almost a year had elapsed between the time when CIW first brought the case to the attention of prosecutors and the time when prosecutors had the evidence they wanted to charge the Ramos family. Meanwhile, the workers had continued to toil under slavelike conditions.

What makes for a good prosecution does not always serve the immediate safety needs of victims. On average, the investigation and prosecution of trafficking and forced labor cases takes between eight months and three years to complete, during which time victims may remain in situations of forced labor or in fear of their captors and associates.

When victims are liberated from situations of forced labor, their treatment by law enforcement varies greatly. For example, in the forced prostitution ring case—a case that was discovered before passage of the Trafficking Act—the victims found themselves imprisoned in a detention center while their perpetrators ran free. Federal agents began raiding the Cadena brothels in November 1997, arresting both victims and perpetrators. Agents then held the victims in a detention center, while many of the criminal ringleaders evaded arrest. An FBI agent involved in the case explained: "We couldn't let the witnesses loose because they want to go home—we'd lose them all. It just happened that way."⁹¹ To ensure that the victims were not deported, the investigating border patrol agent had to call immigration authorities every day to ensure the witnesses would not be deported. "Had we missed a day," the FBI agent said, "we would've lost them." ⁹²

This detention was bad for both the victims and law enforcement. The prosecution team needed to earn the trust of the women freed from forced labor so they would testify against their captors. Yet their detention confirmed to them what the perpetrators had always told the women: if they were caught by the authorities, they would be "in prison for the rest of [their] lives."⁹³

Benefits, Protection, and Compensation

Because of the passage of the Trafficking Act, law enforcement can now offer immigration protection to victims and thus assuage their fear of deportation. For example, federal officials used the "continued presence" provision of the Trafficking Act to bring approximately two hundred Vietnamese workers to the United States from American Samoa in connection with the Kil-Soo Lee case. Lee, a Korean businessman who owned a garment factory on the island, had withheld food, locked the gates of the plant, and forced the victims to work there ostensibly to pay off their transportation "debt" to him. In a massive effort law enforcement coordinated with social service providers to arrange transportation and housing for the victims to resettle in Hawaii and in the mainland United States. With the assistance of legal and social service providers, these victims are currently in the process of applying for T visas and making plans to be reunited with family members. Alternatives to detention of victims are clearly vital to achieving the humanitarian and law enforcement goals of the Trafficking Act.

Yet for every victim who is willing to come forward and testify for prosecutors, there are many who are unable or unwilling to do so. As a result, the victims will not receive immigration relief or other benefits under the Trafficking Act. Jennifer Stanger, at CAST, estimates that only fifty percent of their clients wish to cooperate in the prosecution of their perpetrators. "Even though somebody has been beaten and abused," she says, "it may not be a priority for them to see ... [the perpetrator] go to jail."⁹⁴ Some survivors simply desire to return home and never see their traffickers again. Many advocates believe that immigration relief and permission to work should be granted to survivors automatically and not linked to cooperation with a prosecution.

Survivors of forced labor often fear pressing charges against their former captors because it could result in harm to themselves and their families. For example, after U.S. authorities arrested Lakireddy Bali Reddy in January 2000, journalists reported that many of the parents of Reddy's victims living in Velvadam, India, were fearful of reprisals.⁹⁵ In May 2000, a group of assailants attacked a long-time critic of Reddy and his family while they were asleep at their home in Velvadam and doused the residents with acid. Days later, the critic died from his injuries. A five-year-old victim was badly burned and the legs of the third victim, a woman, were also disfigured. Shortly after the Indian authorities launched an investigation into the attack, a key witness was killed. The motivation for the attack still remains unclear.

In July 2000, the United States immigration authorities took the unusual step of bringing some of the families of Reddy's victims to the United States for their protection. Yet in California, the Reddy victims were threatened. Soon after their liberation from their former captor, two men dressed as police officers—at least one of them carrying a gun—attempted to gain entry to the domestic violence shelter where two of Reddy's victims were housed. One of the women collapsed. Both women were then rushed to a local hospital for treatment. Authorities later moved them to a local Air Force base while service providers looked for suitable housing.

Even after conviction, survivors and their families may remain in danger, whether they return to their home countries or remain in the United States. Several of the perpetrators charged in the forced prostitution case escaped to Mexico, living in the same town as the victims and their families where they continued to threaten and harass their former captives. One witness testified: "They have even threatened to bring our younger sisters to the United States and force them to work in brothels as well."⁹⁶ Similarly, in the case against R&A Harvesting, a witness stills feels that his life could be in danger. He believes there were more perpetrators involved than the three men arrested for the attack and that these men may harm him one day. "I still don't like to go out, like at night to the dances in town," he said. "I keep thinking that someone could be one of the Ramos guys looking for revenge. I live with that fear."⁹⁷ Similarly, Khai, the Thai domestic worker, is desperate to have her son and daughter leave Thailand before her captor completes her sentence. "[My captor] is in prison now," she said. "After she is released, I believe something will happen because law enforcement is different in Thailand." Her former "employer" had once told Khai, perhaps as a warning, that a "hit man" could be hired in Thailand for $200-$300.

Vulnerability of family members abroad causes much anxiety and grief to forced labor victims in the United States. For victims, pursuing justice raises the stakes, and the threats of perpetrators—often powerful members of the communities in which they live and recruit—are quite credible. Several Indian workers who were trafficked for forced labor at John Pickle Company (JPC) reported that "Gulam" Pesh Imam, an executive with Al-Samit International, the company that had recruited them, had threatened their families. After the Indian workers began escaping the John Pickle Company factory, an Al-Samit agent reportedly phoned JPC to ask one of the Indian lead workers about the whereabouts of one of the escaped workers. The Al-Samit agent is alleged to have said that the police in India were looking for the escaped worker and that "[the worker's] brother had been taken by the police and beaten up."⁹⁸› "If Gulam [Pesh Imam] knows I am coming [home], he will arrange to have someone meet me at the airport," one of the workers told the American court. "Gulam has shown that he is a violent man...Many families in India have been threatened or contacted by Gulam or his agents. I have no doubt that if I were to return, my family and me would be in danger."⁹⁹

Despite these real dangers and the Trafficking Act's mandate to protect trafficking survivors, federal authorities have been unable to protect family members of survivors from retributions in their countries of origin. U.S. law enforcement has no authority to intervene directly when acts of retribution take place beyond its borders. While family members have the option of relocating to the United States through the T visa process, that process can take years and is not suited to addressing crisis situations. Emergency relocation is available but not routinely used. Unfortunately, help at the local level in the country of origin, where it could be most effective, is seldom an option. Corruption or indifference of local police and government authorities in the country of origin frequently leave family members and repatriated survivors with nowhere to turn for help. The influence of the perpetrator may hold sway over a survivor across international boundaries and across the span of years. Khai, the Thai woman forced to do domestic work, is painfully aware that her perpetrator's release date of 2006 is quickly approaching and that she only has a few years to arrange for family members to flee Thailand and seek safety in other countries. Thus, the inability to meet a global problem with a global response may leave victims of forced labor reluctant to step forward and thus jeopardize future arrests and prosecutions of perpetrators.

Police indifference and the victim's fear of retribution are compounded by the stature of traffickers in source countries. In at least five of the eight case studies researched for this report, the perpetrators held positions of great wealth and influence in home countries. The Reddy family in Velvadam, India, the Satia family in Cameroon, and the Cadena family in Veracruz, Mexico, are all very wealthy families who are well respected by economically and politically powerful sectors in their respective communities. Survivors reported that "Gulam" Pesh Imann, an executive of Al-Samit International, the recruitment company responsible for bringing the Indian men to work at John Pickle Company, was said to have connections to organized crime in India.¹⁰⁰ Supawan Veerapool, who enslaved Khai, the Thai domestic worker, was the common law wife of Thailand's ambassador to Sweden and is thus politically connected at the highest levels of Thai government.

A consequence of forced labor is that when freed, survivors are usually left with little or no resources to rebuild their lives. While no comprehensive figures are available, some survivors have sued their former captors to collect the money they are owed. The record so far has been mixed. The American Samoan garment workers, for example, thought they had secured a victory after Lee reached an agreement in 1999 with the Department of Labor to pay the workers back wages. Lee went so far as to deposit the wages in the workers' bank accounts. Then he sent employees to accompany workers to the bank and they forced the workers to return the money, threatening to fire those who refused and to return those who sought legal help to Vietnam. In a subsequent class action suit, workers won judgments in the range of $3,000-$7,683, in addition to $2,500 each for damages.¹⁰¹ In the criminal case against Reddy, he was required to pay $2 million in restitution to four victims.¹⁰²

Others have not been so fortunate. A judge ordered the Ramos family to pay the U.S. government $3 million, but the former captives received nothing. In the forced prostitution case, a federal judge ordered the perpetrators to pay $1 million to the women they had forced to work as prostitutes. The ringleader pled poverty and paid nothing, but subsequently attorneys for the women have managed to recover some small sums.

The Trafficking Act currently directs violators to pay restitution to their former captives. Under the act survivors may recover funds for "any costs incurred for physical, psychiatric, or psychological care, and . . . any other losses suffered."¹⁰³ Recent changes to the Trafficking Act allow survivors of forced labor to sue their perpetrators and collect damages. In cases in which prosecutors win convictions, survivors are able to use a criminal judgment to establish their claims once the criminal proceeding is concluded. Even if federal criminal charges were never filed, survivors now may file suit in a federal court and thus avoid relying on state laws that may not be tailored to address forced labor and trafficking violations.

Survivors of Reddy's trafficking and forced labor scheme filed a civil suit to gain compensation from him for their losses. The goal of the suit was to strip Reddy of his wealth and thus diminish his standing in both California and India. The parties settled the case shortly after trial began in April 2004. The sister of the victim who died in Reddy's apartment and her family received $8.9 million. They also received a portion of the $2 million in restitution money awarded in the earlier criminal case. Two other survivors who were not sex victims received $60,000 each.

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