As many as 17,500 people each year are brought to the US by human traffickers who trap them in slavery-like conditions for forced sex, sweatshop labor and domestic servitude, the US Department of Justice reported on Tuesday.
"In the United States, where slavery was outlawed nationally more than 130 years ago, this tragic phenomenon should no longer exist. Yet it does," the department said in a report to Congress.
In separate testimony on Capitol Hill, a top Homeland Security Department official estimated that human smuggling and trafficking generate some US$9.5 billion worldwide each year for criminal organizations that also deal in illicit drugs, weapons and money laundering.
"These untraced profits feed organized crime activities," John Torres, an official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told a subcommittee on immigration.
Torres also said that terrorists could use the same smuggling networks "to gain entry to the United States to carry out their own destructive schemes."
A law passed by Congress in 2000 created a range of new crimes prosecutors could use to bring charges against human traffickers. Using that law, the Justice Department as of last month had 153 open investigations, double the number as the same point in 2001.
From January 2001 through the middle of this month, prosecutors have charged 149 individuals in trafficking cases and won 78 convictions or guilty pleas, a 50 percent increase over the previous three years, the report said. The number of prosecutions since 2001 represents a threefold increase over the three previous years.
Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said the Justice Department hoped to increase prosecutions in the coming months by focusing resources on selected cities and joining forces with state and local police.
"While we're gratified that we've tripled prosecutions, we need to do more. And we are doing more," he said.
As examples, seven people pleaded guilty last year in south Texas to charges they brought women across the Mexican border to trailer homes where they were forced to cook, clean and submit to rape. Ringleader Juan Carlos Soto was sentenced to 23 years in prison and the women were compensated.
Two people pleaded guilty and one was convicted of illegally bringing more than 250 Vietnamese and Chinese women to work as sewing machine operators in an American Samoa factory. The women experienced food deprivation, beatings, physical restraint and were forced to live in guarded barracks. The main defendant, Kil Soo Lee, faces sentencing next month.
Ramiro Ramos was sentenced in March to 180 months in prison for illegally transporting Mexican workers to fruit harvesting fields in Florida, where the victims were threatened with beating and death if they tried to leave and were kept under constant surveillance.
The Justice Department report estimated that between 14,500 and 17,500 people are victims of human trafficking each year in the US.
About two-thirds of the cases prosecuted involve prostitution or sex slavery, with most of the rest involving forced labor.
The report also says that more than US$8 million in Health and Human Services Department funding has been awarded to provide victims' services such as temporary housing, transportation, legal advice and education.
The agency has certified 448 victims since 2000 for its refugee resettlement program.
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