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CHAPTER 1

United States
No one is raiding a factory looking for trafcking victims; they are looking for illegal immigrants.
SUZANNE B. SELTZER, PARTNER AT KLASKO RULON STOCK & SELTZER, LLP

The United States, through the Victims of Trafcking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) and other statutes, prohibits all forms of human trafcking as well as many of the activities that surround it, such as conscating or withholding a persons documents or committing fraud in forced-labor contracting. Those convicted of labor trafcking face imprisonment ranging from 5 to 20 years for involuntary servitude, forced labor, peonage, and domestic servitude. In aggravated circumstances offenders face up to life imprisonment. Sex-trafcking offenders face up to life imprisonment with a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years for the sex trafcking of minors and a minimum sentence of 15 years for trafcking a minor under the age of fourteen through force, fraud, or coercion (U.S. Department of State, 2000, 2011). Although U.S. anti-trafcking laws are adequately stringent, the nations visa programs reect conicts between its anti-trafcking and immigration agendas (discussed later). The H-1B temporary visa program is designed to attract foreign workers in specialized elds such as technology, engineering, and medicine; the H-2A visa program allows for the temporary hire of nonimmigrant foreign workers to perform agricultural labor; and the H-2B visa program allows for the hire of temporary nonimmigrant workers to perform nonagricultural labor on a onetime, seasonal, peakload, or intermittent basis (U.S. Department of Labor, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c). The government, however, does not adequately monitor its visa

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programs, particularly the H-2B visa. Just like the H-1B and H-2A visa programs, the H-2B visa is employer-specic (visa holders suddenly become illegal if they no longer work for the employer identied on their visa applications), but for years it was the lack of regulations and enforcement of the H-2B visa program that left these visa holders the most vulnerable.

THE UNITED STATES AS A DESTINATION

The United States is one of the top ten destinations for human trafcking, with tens of thousands of people brought into the country each year. Until recently experts believed that sex trafcking accounted for most of the victims; today, however, more foreigners are found in labor trafcking. For instance, of the trafcking victims certied by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2009, 82 percent of foreign adults and 56 percent of foreign children were labor trafcking victims.1 Of the foreign trafcking victims identied in 2010, 55 percent of the adults (70 percent men and 30 percent women) and 62 percent of the children (50 percent boys and 50 percent girls) were forced-labor victims (U.S. Department of State, 2010, 2011). The increase in identied forced-labor victims has resulted in an increase in identied male trafcking victims. In 2008, men made up 45 percent of the 286 adults certied by HHS. This was a 15 percent increase over those certied during 2007 and a 39 percent increase since 2006 (U.S. Department of State, 2009c). In 2009, 58 percent of the 271 labor trafcking victims were men (U.S. Department of State, 2010). On the other hand, sex trafcking continues to primarily target female victims. For instance, 15 percent of foreign adult victims certied in 2009 were sex-trafcking victims; all of them were women. Of the 38 percent child sex-trafcking victims who received eligibility letters, 84 percent were girls and 16 percent were boys. Of foreign child forced-labor victims, half were boys and half were girls. Three percent of adults and 6 percent of children were victims of both sex and labor trafcking (U.S. Department of State, 2010). The covert nature of human trafcking makes it difcult to ascertain which countries are primary sources for trafcking into the United

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States. That said, the certication by HHS gives us a glimpse of some possibilities. For instance, the 286 foreign adults certied by HHS in 2008 were primarily from Mexico (23 percent), Thailand (19.5 percent), the Philippines (16 percent), Korea (4 percent), and China (2.7 percent) (U.S. Department of State, 2009c). The United States is also the most frequent destination for victims trafcked from Latin America and the Caribbean, and one of the top three destinations for persons trafcked from Asia (other than other Asian nations). The primary countries of origin for identied foreign victims in 2010 were the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, India, Mexico, the Philippines, and Thailand (U.S. Department of State, 2011). Labor trafcking occurs primarily in domestic and food and care ser vices, garment, and agricultural sectors (Bales et al., 2004, pp. 1, 14). One such case is that of an Egyptian girl, Bennu, who was forced into domestic labor in Irvine, California. In 1999 Bennus sister Eshe was working for Abdel Nasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim and Amal Ahmed Ewisabd Motelib when the couple accused Eshe of theft. In exchange for not going to the authorities, the couple demanded the labor of Bennu, and required her parents to pay them roughly 30 dollars a month for 10 years. Bennu and Eshes parents agreed to the ultimatum, forcing Bennu into domestic servitude. When 10-year- old Bennu arrived in the United States in 2000, the couple conscated her passport. For two years Bennu worked as a housekeeper for the family and as a nanny to the couples ve children. During that time she did not receive pay or education and faced physical and verbal abuse as well as threats of deportation. The couple told her that her family would reject her if she was deported and tried to return home (Srisavasdi, 2006).2 Another alleged forced-labor case, which made headlines throughout the United States, involved roughly 600 Thai nationals brought to Hawaii and the U.S. mainland between 2001 and 2007 by Global Horizons Manpower, Inc. The federal charges, now dismissed, stated that the defendants conscated the workers passports and required them to perform farm labor without pay or for nominal wages.3 The original complaint alleged that the workers were forced to live in overcrowded and substandard conditions (U.S. Department of Justice, 2011a, 2011b). Its a classic bait-and-switch, said FBI Special Agent Tom Simon. They were telling the Thai workers one thing to lure them here. Then, when

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they got here, their passports were taken away, and they were held in forced servitude working on these farms. The complaint also alleged that the defendants used false promises of high-paying jobs to induce the workers to incur excessive debt. In order to secure jobs in the United States, the workers paid recruitment fees of up to $21,000. Many were encouraged to mortgage their homes or farms to make the payment. In the old days, Simon said, they used to keep slaves in place using chains and whips. These days, its done through economic intimidation (Kerr, 2010). The government suddenly dismissed the criminal charges against the defendants in July 2012, but the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is pursuing civil litigation against Global Horizons Manpower as well as six farms where the workers allegedly faced discrimination and deplorable working conditions (Lin, 2012). The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimates that 50,000 women and children are trafcked each year throughout the United States for commercial sexual exploitation. This category covers a variety of forms, including forced prostitution, sex shows, stripping, and pornography (Kaiser, 2005, p. 1A). Lack of regulation within the U.S. sex industry exacerbates the problem. Although prostitution is illegal except in the state of Nevada, the sale of pornography (aside from child pornography) and the operation of strip clubs are legal but largely unregulated. Strip clubs, which are usually zoned in certain areas, are often used as a front for prostitution. Pornography, which is constitutionally protected under the First Amendment, is pervasive in the United States, with Americans spending roughly $10 billion a year on adult entertainment. Pornography is linked to some of the biggest U.S. corporations; Time Warner, Hilton, Westin, AT&T, and Marriott earn tens of millions of dollars a year in distribution (CBS News, 2004; University of Nevada, 2004). The considerable prots earned by large U.S. corporations come at a cost, as the lack of regulation results in the illegal use of underage and trafcked persons. A common feature of all forms of human trafcking is the use of exorbitant fees, such as those for transportation and housing, which places victims in a position of debt bondage and makes them vulnerable to a multitude of additional abuses. This phenomenon is clearly illustrated in a case of women and girls trafcked from Mexico to Florida with the promise of housekeeper and waitress jobs. Upon arrival in the

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United States, the trafckers raped the women and girls, conscated their travel documents, and forced them to prostitute. Guards prevented them from leaving the brothels, and if the victims tried to escape they faced severe physical punishment as well as threats of deportation. The women allegedly earned $3 per trick but never received the money. Instead, the trafckers told the women the earnings would go toward the $2,000-per-person transportation fee. To put some perspective on the situation, in order to pay off her debt, each woman would need to have sex with around 667 men. The trafckers also charged the women for room and board and other miscellaneous fees (OAS/PAHO, 2001). The use of fees to create debt bondage is also apparent in an Atlanta case in which Asian women and girls between the ages of 13 and 25 were trafcked to the United States and forced to prostitute until they paid off debts of between $30,000 and $40,000 per person. Conditions in the bordellos resembled those in a prison, with guards, barbed-wire fences, and dogs (Richard, 2000, p. 21). The lawlessness and high demand for cheap labor that tends to accompany the aftermath of natural disasters can create an atmosphere ripe for human trafcking. Trafcking in New Orleans and other areas devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita began shortly after the storms. To date, at least nine large cases of exploitation in the Gulf Coast region have been documented that may be classiable as forced labor. The cases involve more than 3,728 alleged victims from Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, India, Mexico, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, and Thailand. One such example is that of Thai nationals trafcked to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The victims were forced to work and live in hurricane- damaged buildings riddled with mold and debris without electricity or running water. Some of the victims were eventually discovered inside the Capri Hotel in November 2005 (Andert, 2007, p. 27). Conditions in their living quarters were so squalid that they were forced to cook with contaminated water (Asanok et al., 2007). They did not have enough food, said attorney Lori J. Johnson of Legal Aid of North Carolina, Farmworker Unit. At the end, they had to build traps to capture pigeons to eat.4 The victims civil complaint states that North Carolina human resource company Million Express Manpower, Inc., used a locally based Thai agent to recruit victims in Bangkok. The victims

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were promised legal visas and three years of employment at $8.24 per hour. Each paid over $11,000 in fees simply to secure employment (Asanok et al., 2007). In order to pay the employment fee, says Johnson, victims were steered toward lenders who were in league with the trafckers. To secure the loan, victims had to put up their land and that of family members. Keep in mind that rice farmers in northeast Thailand typically make less than $500 a year. Essentially, there is no way that the workers could pay back the loans on their typical salary in Thailand. Once the victims were sufciently in debt, Million Express Manpower was safely in the power position one that it eagerly highlighted to potential employers. Via word of mouth, [Million Express] Manpower, Inc., began to pitch its labor force as more inclined to work hard because they were so far in debt, Johnson said. In August 2005 the trafckers brought the victims to the United States with temporary H-2A visas. Upon arrival, armed guards conscated the victims return tickets, visas, and passports. The victims spent the rst month primarily working on Howell Farms, Inc. in North Carolina before they were taken to perform demolition on Katrina-ravaged buildings in New Orleans (Asanok et al., 2007). One indicia of trafcking is that the victims are moved from place to place, so that they are kept in disorientation, Johnson said. They were moved around within New Orleans; each place was worse than the previous. They were housed in the buildings that they were demolishing. The Capri Hotel was the nal, and the worst, stop. While in New Orleans, the victims were not paid and were closely supervised by an armed guard to ensure that they did not try to escape. The same guard charged the victims for purchasing their food, but without pay the workers began to go hungry (Asanok et al., 2007). As a result of pressure brought by the Thai embassy, the trafckers had to return the victims to North Carolina in order to meet with embassy representativeswho were beginning to question the victims whereabouts. Unable to t all of the victims into their vehicles, the trafckers left seven in New Orleans with a guard, Johnson said. There were other victims related to this case, some of whom had arrived on a different and previous order. Their whereabouts remain unknown. Others were simply too fearful to participate in the legal proceedings again Million Express Manpower and disappeared before social service providers were able to gain their trust.

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Johnson believes that the post-Katrina setting, in which normal community networks had been compromised and the population was in ux, created ideal trafcking conditions. Devastation from a natural disaster, Johnson says, creates a sudden high demand for low-wage and largely unskilled labor. Disruption of the traditional labor supply leaves room for illicit contractors to move in, and new workers can be brought in unnoticed. Additionally, law enforcement personnel are overextended and do not have the resources to monitor a trafcking scenario. On September 5, 2005, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor temporarily suspended the enforcement of job safety and health standards in hurricane-impacted counties and parishes in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Afrmative-action requirements were also suspended. Within the next several days, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) suspended for 45 days the requirement that employers conrm employee eligibility and identity, and then-president Bush temporarily suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, lifting wage restrictions for nearly 2 months. Under the act, construction workers are guaranteed the prevailing local wage when paid with federal money (Donato & Hakimzadeh, 2009). These changes, intended to speed recovery in the disaster-ravaged region, also opened the oodgates for worker exploitation and human trafcking. For instance, the number of Department of Labor investigations in New Orleans dropped from 70 in the year prior to Katrina to 44 in the year aftera 37 percent decrease. The Department of Labor is the federal cop on the workplace safety, wages, and hours beat, Congressman Dennis Kucinich said. Where was Sheriff Labor during the early months of the reconstruction? (U.S. House of Representatives, 2007, p. 2). One of the groups most affected by the lack of regulation was guestworkers. There seems to be a general misperception that all migrant workers are in the United States illegally, but nearly all98.3 percent of persons identied as potential forced-labor victims in the Gulf Coast region were visa holders. (See Table 1.1.) Of those 3,663 persons, 72 were H-2A visa holders, 361 were H-1B visa holders, and 3,230 were H-2B visa holders (these are the lowest estimates of the potential victims in the alleged Gulf Coast cases).5 U.S. companies or their agents recruited most of these workers. This is not uncommon practice. U.S. companies often use guestworker visas to recruit low-skilled foreign workers. In

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2005 alone, employers brought in 121,000 guestworkers under the H-2 program (Bauer, 2007, p. 1; U.S. House of Representatives, 2008). What stands out in the data we collected are the high number of alleged trafcked persons in the Gulf Coast who were H-2B visa holders, who, as we have seen, are particularly vulnerable to employer exploitation and abuse. In 2005, the year the Gulf Coast region was devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, no government agency claimed ownership of the H-2B program. The Department of Labor stated they had little to no authority to act on behalf of H-2B visa holders. Although statutes existed to protect H-2A visa holders, there was no similar protection for nonagricultural guestworkers. The H-2A program grants workers free housing, access to legal services, employment for at least three-fourths of the total hours promised in his or her contract (this is called the three-quarters guarantee), compensation for medical costs and permanent injury, as well as various other benets (U.S. House of Representatives, 2007). In contrast, wage protection provided to H-2B visa holders was skeletal at best. Employers utilizing the H-2B program were obligated to offer fulltime employment that at minimum paid the prevailing wage rate, but because the H-2B visa was established via a 1994 Department of Labor administrative directive instead of through statutory regulation, the Department of Labor claimed to lack the legal authority to enforce its requirements (U.S. Department of Labor, 1994; U.S. House of Representatives, 2007). Congress exacerbated the problem when in 2005 it vested the Department of Homeland Security with enforcement authority over the H-2B visa program. As a result, the Department of Labor had no authority to enforce the provisions and regulations of the program. According to Kucinich, the Department of Labor had the authority to grant or deny certication for a foreign labor contract through its Ofce of Foreign Labor Certication, but it could not deny certication for an employer who had been prosecuted for labor law violations. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security was granted complete authority over the enforcement of H-2B contract terms. Irrespective of the statutory limitations impeding the Department of Labors advocacy on behalf of H-2B workers, the Department of Labors Wage and Hour Division still had the authority and the responsibility to prosecute employers for

TABLE 1.1 Alleged Gulf Coast Forced-Labor Trafcking Cases Estimate of potential victims 500550

Case David et al. v. Signal International, LLC et al.

Country of origin India

Visa H-2B

Alleged conditions faced by workers False promises; exorbitant fees and payroll deductions for room, board, and work-related tools; withheld documents; surveilled labor camps; threat of deportation; threat of harm; detainment; armed guards; unpaid wages False promises; exorbitant fees; unpaid wages; withheld documents; threat of deportation; monitored workers movements; condemned housing; contaminated water; no food; armed guard(s) False promises; exorbitant fees; unpaid wages; retaliatory ring; eviction; position of debt peonage due to high fees and low wages

Defendants charged under TVPAa; RICOb; FLSAc

Status Ongoing

Asanok et al. v. Million Express Manpower, Inc. et al.

30

Thailand

H-2A

TVPA; RICO; FLSA

Won a default judgment but have been unable to collect on the judgment

Daniel CastellanosContreras et al. v. Decatur Hotels, LLC et al.

300

Peru, Bolivia, Dominican Republic

H-2B

FLSA

Won in district court but lost on appeal

TABLE 1.1 (continued ) Estimate of potential victims 2,300

Case Saucedo et al. v. Five Star Contractors, LLC et al. Fredi Garcia et al. v. Audubon Communities Management, LLC et al. Israel Antonio-Morales et al. v. Bimbos Best Produce

Country of origin Brazil

Visa H-2B

Alleged conditions faced by workers False promises; exorbitant fees; threat of deportation; surveilled labor camp; required to purchase work tools; unpaid wages False promises; unpaid wages; threat of eviction and deportation; eviction

Defendants charged under FLSA; RICO; breach of contract

Status Ongoing

13

Honduras

Undocumented

TVPA; FLSA

Settled

42118d

Mexico

H-2A

Threats of arrest, eviction, and deportation; verbal abuse; at least one instance of physical abuse; use of weapon to intimidate workers; harmful and offensive contact with pesticides; withheld documents; unpaid wages

TVPA; FLSA; breach of contract

On administrative hold until the Department of Justice completes its own investigation

Louisiana Labor, LLC (Matt Redd)

130

Mexico

H-2B

False promises; withheld passports; deplorable living conditions; exorbitant housing costs taken out of wages Exorbitant fees with accruing interest rates; controlled and withheld visa and social security documents; threat of deportation if they tried to move out of arranged high-rent housing Unknown

No suit as of yet

n/a

Mairi Nunag-Taedo et al. v. East Baton Rouge Parish School Board et al. Investigation by the Panamanian governmente
a

361

Philippines

H-1B

TVPA. The case is also under investigation by the Department of Labor Unknown

Ongoing

52

Panama

Unknown

Unknown

Victims of Trafcking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. Racketeer Inuenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (1970). c Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. d Thirty-seven persons were brought from Mexico to work at Bimbos in 2005/2006, approximately 39 in 2006/2007, and approximately 42 in 2007/2008. It is unknown how many of the workers came back annually. e U.S. Department of State, 2009c. Sources: Interviews and correspondence with Mary Bauer, Lori Johnson, Jacob Horwitz, Dan Werner, Stacie Jonas, Robert Anthony Alvarez, and Dan McNeil.
b

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violations of the Federal Labor Standards Act and the Davis-Bacon Act (U.S. House of Representatives, 2007). Fortunately, in late 2008, discussions between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor resulted in an agreement that the Department of Labor should be delegated H-2B enforcement authority. Numerous amendments to the Department of Labor regulations updated the procedures for issuing labor certication to employers sponsoring H-2B guestworkers (U.S. Department of Labor, 2008, 2009b). The amendments, unlike the 1994 administrative directive, expressly prohibit employers from passing onto foreign workers the cost of attorney or agent fees, the H-2B application, or recruitment associated with obtaining labor certication. The Federal Register Rules and Regulations state that these are business expenses associated with aiding the employer to complete the labor certication application and labor market test: The employers responsibility to pay these costs exists separate and apart from any benet that may accrue to the foreign worker (U.S. Department of Labor, 2008, p. 78,039).

TRAFFICKING WITHIN THE UNITED STATES

Sex trafcking is the most common form of human trafcking identied among U.S. citizens. Although HHS identied more than 1,000 internal trafcking victims in 2009, it is extremely difcult to know how many persons this form of trafcking actually affects (U.S. Department of State, 2010). This uncertainty reects both the hidden nature of the crime and the emphasis studies have placed on international as opposed to internal trafcking. There are estimates on the sexual exploitation of minors within the United States, but there is little information on children and adults trafcked within the United States for forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation (Estes & Weiner, 2002, p. 5; Clawson et al., 2009, p. 4). Richard J. Estes and Neil Alan Weiner in the report The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada and Mexico estimate that as of 2001 there were between 244,000 and 325,000 U.S. youths at risk (Estes & Weiner, 2002, p. 150). These numbers may have drastically changed since the release of this report.

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The Child Labor Coalition estimates that 5.5 million U.S. youths between ages 12 and 17 are employed. This number does not include illegal employment such as the use of U.S. children in sweatshops (Clawson et al., 2009, p. 6). In 2008 the Department of Labor found 4,734 minors illegally employed. Forty- one percent of cited child labor violations included children working under hazardous conditions, in hazardous environments, and/or using prohibited equipment. Other child labor violations involved children under the age of 16 working too late, too early, or for too many hours (U.S. Department of Labor, 2009a). Grocery stores, shopping malls, restaurants, and theaters, where children are often employed, have historically shown a high level of noncompliance with child labor laws. Children in agricultural employment are also a particularly vulnerable population. In 2009 the Wage and Hour Division cited ve agricultural employers for employing children under the legal age of employment to perform labor in North Carolina blueberry elds (U.S. Department of Labor, 2009a). The Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs estimates that hundreds of thousands of U.S. children, some as young as nine years old, are migrant and seasonal farmworkers (Hess, 2007, pp. 2, 6, 11). There is a common misconception among Americans that human trafcking within the United States is an underground industry whose victims and abusers are exclusively immigrants. The story of one 15-year- old illustrates that U.S. citizens and legal residents can also become victims of human trafcking. In September 2005 Sarah ran away from home and met her trafckers, Matthew Gray (30 years old) and Jannelle Butler (21 years old), through a friend. They took Sarah to an apartment in the Washington Park area of Phoenix, where they bound and gang-raped her.6 The trafckers then forced Sarah into a dog kennel and with a gun threatened to harm her and her family. When fearful of police, the trafckers hid Sarah in a hollowed- out box spring. The trafckers forced Sarah to prostitute for 42 days. One of her captors, Gray, raped Sarah throughout her time in captivity (Villa & Collom, 2005a; Park, 2008). In early November Sarah managed to call her mother from Grays cell phone. Sarah was too scared to give her mother details regarding her captors or on her exact location for fear that they would harm her family. This fear was not unfounded, as Gray knew where her mother

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and family members lived. Arizona policeman Greg Scheffer says victims often dont call the police, even when given an opportunity to do so, for fear of reprisals (Villa & Collom, 2005b). After receiving her daughters phone call, Sarahs mother called the police. The ofcers made repeat visits to the apartment where Sarah was held and were, at times, just inches away. After Butler was arrested on the last visit and placed in the patrol car, she informed police that Sarah was hidden in the box spring. Butler expressed concern that Sarah might run out of oxygen as she almost fainted the last time she was forced to hide in the compartment. Interestingly, Butler was a victim of similar crimes at age 17. It seems that she subjected Sarah to the same strategy of beatings, threats, and imprisonment that she experienced. Phoenix police sergeant Chris Bray told the Arizona Republic that Butlers actions are not uncommon in victims of abuse, specically child abuse. Its kind of a battered- child syndrome, Bray said. It happened to them. They hated it. And then they do it to someone else (Villa & Collom, 2005b).

CHILD SEX TOURISM

Child sex tourism is a form of exploitation that often takes place off U.S. soil but at the hands of U.S. citizens and legal residents. Many Western men travel to Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand, and pay for sex with children. The humanitarian organization World Vision, which collaborates with the U.S. State Department, HHS, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), estimates that there are 2 million children enslaved worldwide in the commercial sex trade. It also estimates that U.S. citizens make up 25 percent of child-sex tourists globally and up to 80 percent of child-sex tourists in Latin America (World Vision, 2009). In response to the exploitation of children via sex tourism by U.S. citizens and residents, the U.S. government enacted the Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today (PROTECT) Act of 2003, which grants the United States jurisdiction to prosecute its citizens and legal permanent residents who go abroad and pay to have sex with a minor. It does not matter whether the client had knowledge that the child was a minor. Convicted sex tourists face up to

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30 years imprisonment (U.S. Department of Justice, 2006b). Another program, called Operation Twisted Traveler, was launched in February 2009. The program is a collaborative effort by ICE, the Department of Justice, and law-enforcement ofcials in Cambodia to identify, arrest, and prosecute U.S. citizens and legal residents who travel to Cambodia for childsex tourism (U.S. Department of Justice, 2009). As a result of information provided to ICE by the International Justice Mission and Action pour les Enfants, three U.S. citizens were indicted for alleged acts of sex tourism in September 2009. Jack Louis Sporich (75 years old) and Erik Leonardus Peeters (41 years old) were each charged with three counts of having sexual contact with three Cambodian boys, while Ronald Gerard Boyajian (49 years old) was indicted on one count of sexual contact with a 10-year-old Vietnamese girl. If they are found guilty the men face up to 30 years imprisonment for each count of sex tourism. Reports say that Sporich would drive his motorbike in the city of Siem Reap, tossing Cambodian currency as a means of catching the attention of children (U.S. Department of Justice, 2009).

WHAT HAPPENS TO VICTIMS AFTER TRAFFICKING

Even after rescue or escape, the victim experience is far from over. One concern among social ser vice providers is the large number of persons who are found in agent raids, arrested, and deported without a proper evaluation as to whether they are trafcking victims. Also, internal victims are not typically the focus of anti-trafcking efforts and are marginalized as a result. In 2009, HHS-funded outreach programs identied over 700 potential foreign trafcking victims plus more than 1,000 internal trafcking victims. It is unknown how many of the latter were referred to law enforcement or received ser vices (U.S. Department of State, 2010). Additionally, children continue to be arrested for crimes associated with their trafcking experience. In 2008 at least 643 females and 206 males under the age of 18 were reportedly arrested for prostitution and commercialized vice (U.S. Department of State, 2010). Moreover, although the TVPA provides a federal framework for victim protection, safeguards for trafcking victims are not consistent at state and local levels. Forty-two states have enacted, and are slowly beginning to

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use, specic anti-trafcking statutes. Only 9 states offer state public benets to trafcking victims; 18 states permit victims to bring civil lawsuits in state court; 18 states have instituted mandatory restitution; and 9 states require that victims names and/or locations be kept condential (U.S. Department of State, 2010). The United States falls short in several areas when it comes to addressing the post-trafcking experience of victims. These areas include the underutilization of U and T visas (discussed below), the pressure for adult victims to cooperate with law enforcement in order to obtain social ser vices, and the less-than-adequate relationship between social ser vice providers and law enforcement. The Department of Health and Human Ser vices is the only federal agency authorized to grant eligibility letters to minors and certication to adults who are foreign trafcking victims. The agency issued eligibility letters to 50 foreign minors and certied 330 foreign adult victims in 2009, which is an increase from the 31 foreign minors and 286 foreign adult victims granted eligibility or certication in 2008 (HHS, 2009; U.S. Department of State, 2009c, 2010). In 2010 the agency issued 92 eligibility letters to foreign minors and certied 449 foreign adult victims (U.S. Department of State, 2011). Certication and eligibility letters allow victims access to federal ser vices and benets similar to those received by refugees. With the objective of skill development and self-sufciency, minors are provided care through the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors program. United States citizens and lawful permanent residents do not need to be certied or to receive a letter of eligibility to obtain services (HHS, 2009; U.S. Department of State, 2009c).