Where do the largest number of perpetrators and victims of human trafficking live?
The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 24.9 million victims of trafficking worldwide, a criminal activity that generates some 150 billion dollars a year in illicit profits.

Author: Francisco Arias Fernandez | internet@granma.cu

September 7, 2022 21:09:22


Online prostitute services via the internet; foreign and resident women trafficked, forced and coerced by the sex industry; regular customers; pimps; online child traffickers ; corrupt lifeguards, computer technicians, and waiters at Disney theme parks; other collateral merchants were part of an alarming police find in early 2022.

More than a hundred people, including several Disney employees, were arrested in an undercover human trafficking operation in central Florida, which is neither an isolated or rare event nor exclusive to the tourist American state.

Human trafficking is a growing concern in Florida, a territory that ranks third in the US for the impact of this scourge, with serious effects, since it often victimizes children, according to an article in the regional newspaper Orlando Sentinel, titled The Dark Side of the Sunshine State.

A report by the French television station France 24 revealed that, in 2019, in the United States some 400,000 people were daily victims of human trafficking, and five years ago that figure was 60,000, which shows an uncontrolled boom. He adds that this problem attacks the country stealthily, and few victims dare to speak out. Official reports indicate that child prostitution in the US is a concern, as it is estimated that 100,000 minors are forced into prostitution in that country each year.

On the other hand, although the law prohibits certain types of prostitution, different categories of national or foreign prostitutes proliferate throughout the United States, often deceived and forced; but law enforcement agencies have identified street, escort or off-duty, brothel, massage parlor, strip club , sex shop, show and club prostitution.

Last April, the US Justice. uu. dismantled a sex trafficking network controlled from New York, which for three years exploited Asian women in a vulnerable situation and without legal immigration status, who were victims of brutal attacks in a dozen states in that country. The criminal network kept them sexually exploited for weeks in hotels or apartments under their control, and then reinvested the money collected in their illegal activities. Discipline was imposed through beatings with hammers, baseball bats or weapons, tied or isolated, threats, theft of identity documents, among other physical and sexual abuse.

MIGRANTS ARE SOLD UP TO $700 TO BE ENSLAVED

Criminal groups operating on US soil, under the guise of migrant placement agencies, sell them to US ranchers and businessmen to be treated as slaves.

An investigation by the Mexican newspaper Milenio, based on judicial documents from US courts, reveals that only one of the organizations dedicated to the sale of these “modern slaves” obtained profits of 200 million dollars in just four years.

After they cross the border, these mafias often steal identification, personal papers and collect information about their families in their nations. In this way they intimidate them so that they do not escape.

These subjects keep the migrants in fields with electrified fences, where they are mistreated in multiple ways, they are not paid for the work they do and they are given little water; what constitutes labor exploitation and human trafficking. This situation –according to the newspaper– is repeated in the fields of Georgia, Wisconsin, Florida and Texas, entities in which 34 leaders of criminal groups have been prosecuted.

The new slavers operate mainly in the agricultural sector, one of the areas that employs thousands of migrants in the US, although in other cases they have been forced to grow and sell drugs.

It is suggested that, when they arrive in the United States, they are sold to North American ranchers for up to 700 dollars, and forced to work.

It adds that the fishing, textile, construction, mining and agricultural industries are particularly full of forced laborers, including some who arrived on scholarships or work visas.

The New York Times published an article on July 26, entitled The smuggling of migrants at the border is now a multimillion-dollar business, in which it points out that, given the growing demand for coyotes, organized crime entered the scene, with results cruel and violent.

The fees to be paid to smugglers usually range from 4,000 to 10,000 dollars for migrants from Latin America, up to 20,000 in the case of those from Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia, according to an expert from the University of George Mason.

The researcher adds that the increase in irregular migrants who try to cross the US border made the smuggling of these human beings become an irresistible source of money for some cartels and criminal organizations that operate inside and outside the US, industry whose dividends have risen from $500 million in 2018 to $13 billion or more today.

ILLICIT BUSINESS OF 150 BILLION DOLLARS ANNUALLY

The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 24.9 million victims of trafficking worldwide, a criminal activity that generates some 150 billion dollars a year in illicit profits.

Academics and experts gathered at the 7th Latin American and Caribbean Congress on Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants affirmed, at the beginning of July, that after “drug trafficking, trafficking in persons and prostitution – the highest expression of trafficking – represent the second and third industries among the illicit economies in the world.

A Spanish professor pointed out at the event that prostitution has become an export product for women for sexual exploitation, towards prostitution tourism markets, which involve generations of women, girls and adolescents from poor countries, and a huge business of mafias and international pimps.

In addition to kidnapping to access “children’s merchandise”, traffickers have increased the use of the internet and of people close to them.

THE US LAACKS THE MORAL AUTHORITY TO JUDGE OTHERS

As a result of the presentation of the annual (unilateral) report of the US Department of State on human trafficking, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla stated that the United States Government lacks moral authority and deliberately lies about Cuba’s performance against this scourge, for which he rejected the unjustified inclusion of the Island in that black list, for totally political reasons.

The atrocities experienced in the United States by the hundreds of thousands of victims of human trafficking, prostitutes, irregular migrants, the new slaves of ranchers, and minors forced to work, prostitute themselves or traffic drugs in all the states of the Union, do not go beyond being occasional news items in the press under the control of the White House at a global level, to accredit successful operations to confront the law enforcement authorities, almost never to vindicate or defend the victims.

The human rights organization Human Rights Watch, in its World Report 2022, denounces that the current Democratic administration had carried out 753,038 expulsions under Title 42, an illegal policy to expel migrants who arrive at land borders, based on on deceptive health grounds.

Points out that these expulsions disproportionately discriminate against migrant, black, indigenous and Latino people, especially from Central America, Africa and Haiti; while thousands of other travelers can cross the border without any type of health control.

In times of the worst global economic and migratory crisis, the multimillion-dollar profits of the human trafficking and prostitution mafias, such as those of drug trafficking, remain in the American banks and other old slavers from the north, who modernize methods to cover labor deficit, where organized crime has its place according to American and Western pragmatism.

Meanwhile, they erect border and consular walls as an expression of their selectivity, which continues to stimulate the dark and uncertain paths of those who, at any price, try to reach the United States, seeking the better life they were promised.