Modern agricultural slavery goes on display in Florida - St. Petersburg Times

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

In Print: Sunday, March 7, 2010

Oscar Otzoy from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers works on the Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum. It is the replica of a cargo truck that was in an actual Florida slavery case in 2008.

[Trafficking Monitor: Click on URL at the end of the article to see this image. You simply have to see the chains.]Oscar Otzoy holds chains that will be part of an exhibit in the Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum.
[Associated Press]

FORT MYERS — The white truck's cargo space is dark, cluttered and hot — walls lined with stained plywood, cardboard boxes stacked head-high, a steel, roll-down door.

This is what home looked like for some of the Navarrete family's slaves.

It's best not to imagine what it smelled like — the 24-square-foot truck's corners were the locked-in captives' toilets.

This ordinary-seeming produce truck is the centerpiece of the Florida Modern-Day Slavery Museum, which began touring recently.

It's a replica of the one the Navarretes used before they went to federal prison in 2008 for keeping 12 slaves they forced to pick tomatoes on some of Florida's biggest farms. After promising the Mexican and Guatemalan men work, Navarrete family members confiscated their IDs, tied, chained and beat them if they tried to leave. Although they advanced their victims "credit" for necessities, they didn't pay them for their work, all of which added up to slavery "plain and simple," according Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy.

Slavery? Didn't slavery end in 1865?

Not in Florida's agriculture industry, say the farmworkers putting the mobile museum together.

In fact, the U.S. government has freed more than 1,000 slaves in Florida since 1997.

The idea is to educate people about how this scourge persists and how to end it, according to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which is putting it together.

In addition to trying to improve pay and working conditions, the grass roots nonprofit is recognized as a leader in the fight against contemporary slavery. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement asked the group to help create its slavery investigation curriculum and FBI director Robert Mueller has lauded it.

Visitors to the free museum can climb into the truck as well as view other grim exhibits.

In one glass case is a wrinkled shirt, blotched with blood. In 1996, it belonged to a 17-year-old worker named Edgar, explained coalition member Lucas Benitez. When the teen paused in the field to get a drink of water, the boss beat him savagely "to make an example of him," Benitez said.

But the young worker fled, eventually making his way to the coalition. That night, hundreds of workers marched to the boss' house. The next morning, the boss could find no one to work for him. Afterward, the boss changed his ways.

"You can talk about slavery intellectually, but to be able to actually see (artifacts) creates a whole different, visceral response. To look at that box truck, to think about people living in there — you experience it to get it," said Nola Theiss, executive director of the Human Trafficking Awareness Project.

Museum visitors also can see coverage of slavery in Florida over the years and learn what the group is doing to end it. Key to its efforts is the Campaign for Fair Food to increase wages for harvesters and improve their working conditions.

The coalition has forged Fair Food agreements with the three largest fast-food companies (Yum Brands, McDonald's and Burger King); Compass, the world's largest food-service company; and Whole Foods, the largest natural food chain.

The group has asked Publix to join, too — and to stop buying tomatoes from Pacific Tomato Growers and Six L's, where the Navarretes took their slaves to work. Publix has said it will not sign on.

After its tour of the state, on April 16 the truck will be at the head of the coalition's march from Tampa to Publix's Lakeland headquarters.


[Last modified: Mar 06, 2010 11:14 PM]

Modern agricultural slavery goes on display in Florida - St. Petersburg Times

Brighton prayer vigil marks Human Trafficking Awareness Day

Image by Lawrence OP via Flickr

By Pilot Staff
Posted: 1/15/2010

Sisters Marilyn McGoldrick, CSJ, Marylou Simcoe, SUSC, and Carole Lombard, CSJ, lead the prayer vigil outside the Motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Brighton, Jan. 10. Pilot photo/ Courtesy Leadership Conference of Women Religious Boston Unit

BRIGHTON -- Local Catholic Sisters representing sixteen congregations in the Greater Boston area hosted a gathering Jan. 10 to commemorate the third annual Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Over 130 sisters, associates, co-workers, friends, and family joined in a prayer vigil for an end to the evil of modern-day slavery.

A resolution passed by the U.S. Senate on June 22, 2007, marked Jan. 11 as a day of awareness and vigilance for victims of Human Trafficking across the globe and President Barak Obama proclaimed January 2010 as national Human Trafficking Prevention Month. In June 2009 Pope Benedict XVI lauded the commitment made by women religious to put a stop to human trafficking and rebuild the lives of those victimized by this phenomenon.

Sister Ann Regan, SC, took part in the Jan. 10 prayer vigil because, “we hear so much about trafficking. This is an opportunity to stand up as people who oppose trafficking abuse.”

Sister Mary Ann Connolly, SC, said that, “it is important to stand together as one against this tragedy.”

Also joining in the prayer vigil were Linda Coletti of Medford, and Connie Pagan of Framingham. Coletti is State Regent and Pagan is First Vice Regent of the Catholic Daughters of the Americas.

Coletti explained, “Not only because it involves women but because through our pro-life activities we support all kinds of issues about the sanctity of life, our membership has picked up the issue of trafficking at the national level.”

Pagan is grateful for the sisters who have spoken about human trafficking with the Massachusetts Catholic Daughters, “We’ve learned a lot about human trafficking. It’s in our neighborhoods. Learning about this was an eye-opener for all of us.”

The prayer vigil, coordinated by the Anti-Trafficking Coalition of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) -- Boston Unit, was one of a number of events sponsored by the coalition over the past several years.

The goal of the Anti-Trafficking Coalition ATC is to raise awareness of the reality of human trafficking both locally and globally and to alert concerned people of good will about how individuals can make a difference in eradicating human trafficking.

Roman Catholic women religious have been key leaders in the national and international movement to stop human trafficking. In the past two years the Boston area ATC has sponsored two symposia attended by well over 200 participants wanting to be part of the initiative to end this crime against humanity. Another symposium addressing the issue of human trafficking is planned for April 24, 2010.


Brighton prayer vigil marks Human Trafficking Awareness Day . Published in the 1/15/2010edition of The Pilot

The New Slave Trade in South Africa - TIME

Image via Wikipedia

By E. Benjamin Skinner Monday, Jan. 18, 2010

[PHOTO]A teenage girl waits near a hotel in Bloemfontein.
Melanie Hamman

For a South African victim of human trafficking, this was the endgame. On a freezing night last July, Sindiswa, 17, lay curled in a fetal position in bed No. 7 of a state-run hospice in central Bloemfontein. Well-used fly strips hung between fluorescent lights, pale blue paint flaked off the walls, and fresh blood stained her sheets, the rusty bedpost and the linoleum floor. Sindiswa had full-blown AIDS and tuberculosis, and she was three months pregnant. Sweat poured from her forehead as she whispered her story through parched lips covered with sores. A few blocks away, the roars of rugby fans erupted from Free State Stadium. In June the roars will be from fans of the World Cup. (See pictures of South Africa.)

Sindiswa's family was one of the poorest families in Indwe, the poorest district in Eastern Cape, one of the poorest provinces in South Africa. Ninety-five percent of the residents of her township fall below the poverty line, more than a quarter have HIV, and most survive by clinging to government grants. Orphaned at 16, she had to leave school to support herself. Last February, a woman from a neighboring town offered to find work for her and her 15-year-old best friend, Elizabeth, who, like Sindiswa, was poor but was also desperate to escape her violent older sister. (I have changed Elizabeth's name to protect her identity.)

After driving them eight hours north to Bloemfontein, the recruiter sold them to a Nigerian drug and human-trafficking syndicate in exchange for $120 and crack cocaine. "[The recruiter] said we could find a job," Sindiswa recalled, "but as soon as we got here, she told us, 'No. You have to go into the streets and sell yourselves.'" The buyer, Jude, forced them into prostitution on the streets of central Bloemfontein for 12 straight hours every night. Each morning, he collected their earnings — Sindiswa averaged $40 per night; Elizabeth, $65. Elizabeth tried to escape three times, once absconding for several weeks. Jude always found her or used Sindiswa as a hostage to lure her back, then enlisted an enforcer named Rasta to beat her. (See pictures of violence in South Africa.)

It is unclear if Sindiswa contracted HIV before or after she was sold, but some of her clients didn't use condoms. She was diagnosed with the virus only a week before I met her. When she was too sick to stand and thus useless as a slave, Jude had thrown her onto the street. Nurses expected her to die within days.

Despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history. Slaves are those forced to perform services for no pay beyond subsistence and for the profit of others who hold them through fraud and violence. While most are held in debt bondage in the poorest regions of South Asia, some are trafficked in the midst of thriving development. Such is the case here in Africa's wealthiest country, the host of this year's World Cup. While South Africa invests billions to prepare its infrastructure for the half-million visitors expected to attend, tens of thousands of children have become ensnared in sexual slavery, and those who profit from their abuse are also preparing for the tournament. During a three-week investigation into human-trafficking syndicates operating near two stadiums, I found a lucrative trade in child sex. The children, sold for as little as $45, can earn more than $600 per night for their captors. "I'm really looking forward to doing more business during the World Cup," said a trafficker. We were speaking at his base overlooking Port Elizabeth's new Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium. Already, he had done brisk business among the stadium's construction workers.

Although its 1996 constitution expressly forbids slavery, South Africa has no stand-alone law against human trafficking in all its forms. Aid groups estimate that some 38,000 children are trapped in the sex trade there. More than 500 mostly small-scale trafficking syndicates — Nigerian, Chinese, Indian and Russian, among others — collude with South African partners, including recruiters and corrupt police officials, to enslave local victims. The country's estimated 1.4 million AIDS orphans are especially vulnerable. South Africa has more HIV cases than any other nation, and a child sold into its sex industry will often face an early grave.

As Sindiswa told me her story, her voice trailed off, and the man who brought me to her — Andre Lombard, 39, a pastor of the Christian Revival Church — laid his hands on her. Lombard had a penetrating gaze and a simmering rage toward men who abuse women. His father, a brutal drunkard, had beaten his mother regularly. Lombard became a born-again Christian at age 17, then served in South Africa's élite special forces for 11 years. (See 25 people who mattered in 2009.)

He began a street ministry in April 2006 and recruited some 60 volunteers to distribute food, blankets and Bibles to the dozens of women and girls selling sex within a 10-block radius of the stadium. They also preached to clients and traffickers. Fights were commonplace. Lombard allowed his volunteers to carry firearms, and several wound up in the intensive-care unit of the local hospital. Lombard acknowledges that most of the prostitutes were not enslaved. Still, in a controversial move, he purchased bus tickets home for more than two dozen women as a way to "escape the streets." With no comprehensive rehabilitation, however, several wound up back in prostitution. Mainstream antitrafficking organizations often decry such tactics as reckless. In response, Lombard says, "I'm a goer. If you drive by and just talk about it and don't do anything, you're actually justifying it."

After we left the hospice, Lombard drove eight blocks east of the stadium to the notorious Maitland Hotel. Police had identified the Maitland as a base of drug- and human-trafficking operations. HIV-positive survivors described how traffickers used gang rape, drug provision, sleep deprivation and torture to "break" new children on the fifth floor; the fourth floor featured an illegal abortion clinic. On other floors, as many as four girls slept on a single mattress. Police raided the Maitland in 2008 and shut the place down last January. Traffickers had been tipped off about the final raid, yet officials still rescued dozens of underage girls and seized weapons and thousands of dollars' worth of drugs. Though still officially closed, the Maitland was active. Next door, a club blasted music by Tupac, and several girls worked the front of the hotel, where a makeshift concierge took rents. (See TIME's tribute to people who passed away in 2009.)

A shivering girl in a red sweatshirt and flip-flops stood alone at the corner of the hotel. She said she was 15 and desperately needed help. I asked Lombard's volunteer to translate from Xhosa. Shockingly, this was Elizabeth — Sindiswa's best friend — still controlled by Jude. Having researched modern-day slavery for eight years, I knew how difficult it was for survivors to heal after emancipation. In this case, mere emancipation would be a dangerous procedure.

Earlier that day, I spoke with Luis CdeBaca, who was visiting South Africa on his first foreign visit as President Obama's ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat human trafficking. "Dedicated cops, prosecutors and victim advocates are fighting the traffickers in several host cities, but they're largely doing it on their own," he said. Obama has pledged to make the fight to abolish modern-day slavery a top foreign policy priority, but the U.S. currently spends more in a single day fighting drug trafficking than it does in an entire year fighting human trafficking. So CdeBaca, whose office evaluates every country based on its efforts to fight human bondage, must rely largely on diplomatic pressure. "An exploitation-free World Cup will require resources and political will from the South African government and the international community alike," said CdeBaca.

Such political will is not evident. At best, the South African government's response to child sex trafficking has been superficial or piecemeal; at worst, some officials have actually colluded with the traffickers. American and South African law-enforcement sources described how police at all levels have solicited underage prostitutes in Bloemfontein, Durban and other World Cup cities. South African officials claim that Parliament will pass a comprehensive law against human trafficking in early 2010. For now, enterprising police officers who take on human traffickers do so with few legal tools at their disposal. Convictions for trafficking-related offenses typically bring little or no jail time. And those vigilante humanitarians like Lombard face an emboldened and violent adversary, as I saw that evening. (See TIME's South Africa covers.)

Elizabeth insisted that we recover her scant possessions: a handful of clothes and a Bible. Jude had convinced her that he would perform witchcraft on those items, to track and punish her if she again attempted escape. We drove to Jude's fortified crack den five minutes away. Lombard and I followed Elizabeth into the darkness behind the compound. We were joined by Shadrack, a kung-fu-trained church volunteer who worked as a financial adviser by day. Elizabeth tapped a secret knock, and after Jude ushered her in, Shadrack wedged his foot in the door. We pushed into the dingy flat, which bore the medicinal odor of crack. As the churchmen escorted Elizabeth to retrieve her clothes, I smiled and feigned ignorance of their intent. While Lombard and Elizabeth retrieved her possessions, I spoke to Jude alone. Short and muscular, with dark, patchy skin, Jude wore slim, brown corduroys and white Crocs with green dollar signs. Jude explained that he lured girls from Johannesburg, where many survive by "picking through garbage." Our conversation turned to soccer. I asked him if he was looking forward to the World Cup. "Yeah, this is good! Us people are going to make a lot of money then if you know what you're doing." (See pictures of Johannesburg preparing for the World Cup.)

As I prepared to leave, a woman began screaming from a sealed-off room in the compound. Lombard burst back into the room and forced his way to the darkened recesses of the compound. He kicked in a door to find Rasta, the syndicate's enforcer, half naked with the screaming woman, who ran behind Lombard. "Did you beat her? Because if you beat her, you must beat me," Lombard said, inches from the flaring eyes of the muscular Rasta. Rasta launched a haymaker at Lombard, who ducked. Rasta threatened to call in his "brothers." "I'll break their legs too," Lombard retorted as we retreated to our car, where the photographer traveling with us, Melanie Hamman, was bent in prayer with Elizabeth. With Jude chasing us on foot, we drove off.

Newly elected South African President Jacob Zuma addressed fears about sex trafficking in a speech last August. "We have noted the concern amongst women's groups that the 2010 FIFA World Cup may have the unintended consequence of creating opportunities for human trafficking," the President said. "We are putting systems in place to prevent this, as part of general security measures that we should take when hosting an event of this magnitude."

Zuma's pledge was too little, too late for Sindiswa, who died on July 22. Immediately after we took Elizabeth off the streets, Hamman and I drove her eight hours to her home in Eastern Cape. Wary of the failure rate of Lombard's unmonitored returns, we worked with a dedicated social worker in Indwe to ensure that the conditions under which she was originally trafficked did not reappear. A suburban-Chicago couple has given her a full scholarship, enabling the otherwise impossible goal of finishing school. She is HIV-negative. It is a stretch to call her lucky. But she has another chance at life.

Skinner is the author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery (Free Press, 2008), which was recently awarded the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for nonfiction. This investigation was supported by a grant from Humanity United

The New Slave Trade in South Africa - TIME

Related articles by Zemanta

• Rabbi Steve Gutow: Bound Together: Contemporary Slavery and Global Poverty (huffingtonpost.com)
• Rowing across the Atlantic to end slavery (gadling.com)
• The 2010 World Cup and Decriminalising the Sex Trade (southafricaproject.org)

Obama: Recommit to end human trafficking - UPI.com

Image by jmtimages [back to the grind...] via Flickr

Published: Jan. 5, 2010 at 8:22 AM

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month is a time to recommit to stopping human traffickers, U.S. President Barack Obama said.

"The victims of modern slavery have many faces. They are men and women, adults and children," Obama said in a proclamation Monday declaring January National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. "Yet, all are denied basic human dignity and freedom."

Even though the "dim years of chattel slavery" in the United States ended by President Abraham Lincoln's actions and the Civil War, Obama said "the darkness and inhumanity of enslavement exists."

During National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, "we acknowledge that forms of slavery still exist in the modern era, and we recommit ourselves to stopping the human traffickers who ply this horrific trade," the proclamation read.

Obama called on the global community to provide safe havens to victims and to prosecute the traffickers.

"With improved victim identification, medical and social services, training for first responders, and increased public awareness, the men, women, and children who have suffered this scourge can overcome the bonds of modern slavery, receive protection and justice, and successfully reclaim their rightful independence."

National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month culminates in National Freedom Day Feb.1, Obama said.

"I call upon the people of the United States to recognize the vital role we can play in ending modern slavery, and to observe this month with appropriate programs and activities."

Obama: Recommit to end human trafficking - UPI.com

Related articles by Zemanta

• Rabbi Steve Gutow: Bound Together: Contemporary Slavery and Global Poverty (huffingtonpost.com)

Myanmar makes efforts in combating human trafficking _English_Xinhua

Image via Wikipedia

♦www.chinaview.cn 2009-12-24 11:35:54

By Feng Yingqiu

YANGON, Dec. 24 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar has been making efforts in combating human trafficking, claiming that it has rescued over 1,000 trafficked victims in four years' period since 2005 when the country's anti-human trafficking law was introduced.

More than 1,100 traffickers were also exposed in connection with 400 cases of its kind, according to the Home Ministry's Central Committee for combating human trafficking.

Those, who were repatriated from Thailand, stood the majority, followed by those from China, Malaysia, Japan, Bangladesh, Jamaica and Singapore as well as China's Macao and Chinese Taiwan, the home ministry's figures showed.

The government has so far built eight rehabilitation centers offering educational program and vocational skill training for the returned victims.

In 2008 alone, the Myanmar authorities reportedly rescued 203 victims, punishing 342 traffickers in connection with 134 related cases.

Meanwhile, Myanmar, in cooperation with non-governmental organizations, has developed information networks at highway terminals in the second largest city of Mandalay to curb human trafficking undertakings centered in the city.

Mandalay has been exposed as the country's internal human trafficking point and used as transit center to reach up to border areas along the trafficking route of Mandalay-Pyin Oo Lwin-Lashio-Muse to other countries.

To facilitate the repatriated victims, Myanmar is also planning to set up temporary care center for them in Muse with the help of GGA organization of Japan.

To promote cooperation with neighboring countries in cracking down on human trafficking at the basic level, Myanmar has so far set up border liaison offices in Muse with China and in Tachilek, Myawaddy and Kawthoung with Thailand

Coordination is also being made for the move involving the UNODC and UN Inter Agency Project (UNIPA) on Human Trafficking.
Editor: Wang Guanqun
Related Stories

Myanmar makes efforts in combating human trafficking _English_Xinhua

Related articles by Zemanta

• Chinese border town emerges as new front line in fight against human trafficking (starting-points.blogspot.com)

Ask Questions Later: Victims are too often deported - KansasCity.com

By MIKE McGRAW
The Kansas City Star
Posted on Tue, Dec. 15, 2009 10:15 PM

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala | In a dingy reception center across from the new terminal at La Aurora International Airport, Guatemalan immigration agents don surgical masks and brace for another day of controlled chaos.

A U.S. government passenger jet — one of up to seven a week — taxis to a stop. More than 100 disheveled deportees shuffle down the stairs and head for the center. Agents check for criminal records and swine flu and return shoelaces confiscated stateside, usually as a suicide precaution.

One thing the agents won’t do, however, is check to see if the deportees were victims of human trafficking while on U.S. soil.

“We don’t look at that,” said a Guatemalan immigration agent. “That’s done by the U.S. government before they send them here.”

In fact, that’s not the case.

Instead, The Kansas City Star found, the U.S. government compounds their suffering by deporting them back to the same impoverished conditions they fled in the first place. Up to one-fourth of the victims who might have testified against their traffickers were deported.

What’s more, deportees on one of two Kansas City-based government airlines have been abused or sedated in violation of federal regulations, The Star found.

“These are very disturbing allegations and this is not permitted under our system,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who heads the House subcommittee that oversees detention and deportation procedures. That is “completely at odds with our policy,” she noted, adding that The Star’s findings should be investigated.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials who charter the flights said they take great care to identify trafficking victims, but would not comment specifically on whether they screen all deportees for human trafficking status, or whether they are aware of deporting trafficking victims.

They said they have guidelines to prevent abuse of deportees, but they acknowledged that earlier this year at least one deportee was sedated on a Marshals Service flight in direct violation of those regulations.

Yet ICE said in a statement that it “takes allegations of trafficking very seriously and investigates any claims that a person makes to indicate they have been a victim of trafficking or trafficking-related crimes.”

The State Department and Congress recognize the need for more aggressive screening to keep from deporting human trafficking victims, said Luis CdeBaca, the director of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

“We are going to be working … to make sure those vulnerable populations are not just shown the door,” he said.

Top officials, however, have known about the problem for years.

Trafficking expert Julianne Duncan, formerly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told federal officials in 2005 that trafficking victims — who are often forced into prostitution or hard labor — are “frequently deported rather than provided services. This is shockingly the case even for children.”

That’s allegedly what happened to Mardoqueo Valle-Callejas and many of the 388 workers swept up in a workplace raid last year at a Postville, Iowa, meat processing plant.

The Guatemalan father of five came to America illegally to earn money for his family. But he told The Star that he was forced to provide hours of free labor to his bosses, work when injured and that he had questionable fees deducted from his remaining earnings.

Iowa officials are also pursuing some 9,000 child labor law violations involving 32 young Guatemalan workers caught up in the same raid, some as young as 15. Some were illegally put to work at jobs that exposed them to dangerous chemicals at the Postville plant, according to a complaint by the Iowa attorney general.

“These are classic examples of human trafficking victims,” said attorney Sonia Parras Konrad, who is representing many of those swept up in the raid. ICE never screened them for victim status, she said.

Had they been identified as human trafficking victims, they could have qualified for aid and ultimately may have been allowed to remain in the United States.

Instead, most were jailed for five months and then deported.

The Star’s investigation also found more than 100 instances, most between 2007 and 2009, in which the government violated or tried to sidestep its own rules for the treatment of deportees on government flights carrying trafficking victims and other vulnerable detainees such as children, the mentally ill, the sick and the dying.

The findings are based on court documents and thousands of pages of reports released under the Freedom of Information Act.

In some cases deportees were boarded on four- to five-hour flights without needed medication. Some were boarded despite being too ill to fly, at times potentially exposing guards and other passengers to communicable diseases.

Medical problems aboard the flights clearly resulted at least in part from mismanaged health care inside U.S. immigration detention centers, according to a report released last week by Dora Schriro, a special adviser to ICE.

Schriro found that ICE often sent immigrants to detention centers before assessing their health needs, resulting in some not getting proper medical attention. She also said that ICE’s “assessment, treatment, and management of pandemic and contagious diseases were inconsistent.”

In addition, Schriro, a former Missouri prison official who now runs New York City’s jails, said, “Medical summaries were not always provided when detainees were transferred.”

Other deportees were harassed or denied permission to use lavatories on the planes, causing some to soil their clothing. Some deportees — chained at the wrists, ankles and waist — also were sedated with dangerous drugs, even after federal officials promised to discontinue the practice.

And that represents only the cases guards and nurses actually documented.

Many others may have gone unreported, some guards said, because of an unspoken rule that “what happens on the plane stays on the plane.”

Deportation frenzy

During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama said it was unrealistic to believe the United States could deport all of the 12 million illegal immigrants estimated to be living in America.

“We are not going to send them home,” Obama said.

But the government seems to be trying. For the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, the United States deported 387,790 illegal immigrants — the seventh consecutive record for deportations.

At some point most of them were passengers on one of two government “airlines” headquartered in Kansas City, one operated by ICE and the other by the U.S. Marshals Service.

A few deportees are criminals, but most are what ICE calls “non-criminal” immigrants who entered the United States illegally. Most are from Mexico and nearly all came to find higher-paying jobs.

Some also are human trafficking victims, according to a report last year funded by the Justice Department.

“People definitely get deported who shouldn’t be deported,” said Nancy Morawetz, a professor at New York University School of Law and an expert on deportation law.

In fact, the United States has mistakenly been deporting its own citizens, including 31 specific cases recently documented by Jacqueline Stevens, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

One was Mark Lyttle, a cognitively disabled man who was born in North Carolina, but deported to Mexico even though he speaks no Spanish and has no Mexican heritage.

Lyttle was chained and boarded onto a U.S. Marshals Service plane late last year, flown to a staging area in Texas, and ordered to walk across the border.

Lyttle’s strange odyssey began after he served jail time for inappropriately touching an employee at a group home where he lived. A jail form showed his birthplace as Mexico, and he gave ICE conflicting statements.

Stevens, who has studied the federal file on Lyttle, said records ICE checked showed Lyttle was born in the United States and was a U.S. citizen, but that ICE agents “falsely swore to the contrary.”

Lyttle finally made it home in April this year, after he persuaded a consular officer in the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala to contact his family. ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

Federal auditors documented numerous weaknesses in ICE’s “alien removal decision making” process, especially during large workplace raids such as the one in Iowa. The problems included a failure to identify “humanitarian issues,” such as child welfare and medical problems.

It’s little wonder then, critics contend, that human trafficking victims sometimes get deported.

Agents should be required to screen for such victims after all workplace raids, said Leslye Orloff, director of the Immigrant Women Program, Legal Momentum.

“If we take the Postville case, we know there were at least some women who were picked up in the raid and later deported that may well have been crime victims,” Orloff said.

While ICE officials acknowledged they were told of substandard working conditions and inadequate pay at Postville, they said no one claimed to be a human trafficking victim.

But victims are often reluctant to step forward, experts said, especially during raids such as the one in Postville.

“We ask other countries to make sure they are not deporting human trafficking victims,” said Mark Lagon, former director of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. “But there’s every reason to think that we have deported them, too.”

Shroud of secrecy

An ICE public affairs officer accompanied a Star reporter and photographer on one deportation flight in August from San Antonio to Guatemala City.

Deportees on the flight were “non-criminal” illegal immigrants, and none were in chains. Conditions mirrored those on other flights, said Pat Reilly, an ICE spokeswoman. But documents, lawsuits and interviews with deportees, nurses and guards paint a different picture when the media isn’t around — especially on ICE’s partner airline run by the U.S. Marshals Service.

Deportations and transfers occur under a shroud of secrecy, often after detainees have been locked up for weeks or months.

Because of space limitations in some detention centers, many are repeatedly transferred by ICE or Marshals Service planes in what one recent report described as a game of musical chairs.

“The transfers are devastating, absolutely devastating,” immigration attorney Rebecca Kitson told Human Rights Watch for a recent report on the transfers.

Kitson said detainees “are loaded onto a plane in the middle of the night. They have no idea where they are, no idea what state they are in. I cannot overemphasize the psychological trauma to these people.”

The transfers also severely disrupt the attorney-client relationship, said Human Rights Watch, “because attorneys are rarely, if ever, informed of their clients’ transfers.”

ICE said the process is designed to reduce security risks.

But records show that some of those transferred and deported on the planes have been subjected to inhumane treatment and physical abuse on the trip, even those who were shackled.

As recently as last year Dianna McChargue, a Marshals Service supervisor, said in a sworn statement that she told her bosses that some guards on the flights were sexist and racist toward fellow guards and others, but that they ignored her warnings.

A few years earlier, McChargue admonished guards for discouraging deportees from “defecating during lavatory call” because of “unpleasant odors.” She ordered them to stop preventing deportees from using lavatories in any way they needed.

The Marshals acknowledged “isolated cases” where deportees were denied permission to use lavatories during flights but added, “We can assure you these incidents have been addressed.“

Internal documents show ICE and the Marshals Service continue to disagree on how deportees should be treated on the flights.

In fact, the Marshals refused a request from ICE this summer to stop carrying stun guns, sedating passengers and restraining females and juveniles on the flights it operates for ICE.

The Marshals cited security concerns, adding that deportees are clearly in Marshal custody during those flights. ICE insists, however, that deportees remain in ICE custody, even while on Marshals Service planes.

Pre-flight cocktails

From 2003 to 2007, numerous deportees were injected with “pre-flight cocktails” before their flight home, according to congressional testimony.

The main ingredient: Haldol, a potent antipsychotic that can cause death. In some cases, sedated deportees needed wheelchairs to get off the plane.

The practice became so controversial that ICE ordered it stopped and said it would no longer involuntarily sedate immigrants without a court order. “There are no exceptions to this policy,” an ICE memo said at the time.

But The Star found that the practice never really stopped, at least for detainees on Marshals Service flights operated as ICE charters.

Records show the Marshals Service in May forcibly injected a Jamaican detainee with Haldol — even after he had been moved to the back of the plane and was no longer disruptive.

Ashim Mitra, a pharmacy professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, called it a clear violation of ICE policies and an overreaction that risked harming the patient.

ICE told The Star it learned of the incident after the fact and sent the Marshals a memo asking them to stop. The Marshals said that they are aware of the memo, but that the action was called for under their own policies, and they don’t intend to make changes.

Incident reports obtained by the newspaper also show that ICE boarded or tried to board detainees who were too physically or mentally ill, or too far along in their pregnancy to travel under ICE’s own guidelines.

The reports also showed that ICE often failed to provide nurses on Marshals Service flights with required medical records for deportees, and that seriously ill deportees were sometimes boarded without their medications.

“It was unbelievable the condition some of these people were in when they arrived,” said Nina Siulc, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, who interviewed several thousand Dominican deportees within minutes of their arrival there.

Scott Allen, a doctor with Physicians for Human Rights, said, “The documents I reviewed show multiple cases involving pressure on flight nurses to board improperly screened patients, or patients without proper medical documentation. This is simply bad practice.”

Neither the Marshals Service nor ICE responded directly to the allegations in the reports, but both said they have guidelines to prevent such incidents.

Court documents show some deportees also have been harassed and threatened aboard the planes.

Marshals Service guard Fernando DaCosta held a switchblade knife in the face of a young Mexican deportee on one flight and threatened to cut his throat if he didn’t give DaCosta his correct name, according to allegations in a federal anti-discrimination lawsuit.

The Marshals suspended DaCosta for two weeks in 2006 for “obscene and derogatory language” directed toward fellow workers and others, and “conduct unbecoming an aviation enforcement officer.”

ICE and the Marshals Service refused to comment about DaCosta, calling it a personnel matter. DaCosta, who is no longer with the Marshals Service, said the incident “never happened.”

The Star also found that guards, deportees and others potentially have been exposed to communicable diseases such as tuberculosis because ICE failed to follow its own screening criteria. On several occasions, records show ICE agents attempted to board detainees despite what a nurse called “grossly positive” TB skin tests.

ICE insists all deportees are carefully screened and that deportees who test positive for TB are not sent home if they are contagious.

But in May 2003, in what federal auditors later called “an extreme case of failed medical screening,” a Marshals Service crew was ordered to board a female detainee who met the plane in Chicago.

She and two ICE agents wore surgical masks and protective clothing, and she showed symptoms of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Top Marshals Service officials in Kansas City ordered the woman boarded over objections from the nurse and the rest of the crew. The incident sparked a mutiny, and the crew refused to continue the mission.

She was later transported on a commercial airliner filled with passengers.

Valle-Callejas’ journey

Advocates for detainees rounded up in the 2008 workplace raid in Postville said a lack of proper screening by ICE also led to the deportation of potential human trafficking victims.

They included Valle-Callejas, who was deported on one of the flights to Guatemala City.

With his family gathered around in his impoverished village of Calderas, Valle-Callejas told the story of his ill-fated trek to America.

After putting up his house for a loan to smugglers, he was shuttled across the U.S. border illegally and traveled north looking for work. He said he ended up in a job where his illegal status was held over his head.

“I worked 86 hours a week and never got paid for more than 60,” he recalled. “If we complained, they would take the job away, and this was the only job available.”

After his arrest, U.S. authorities gave Valle-Callejas and the others a choice. Plead guilty to illegal entry and identity theft and spend five months in prison before being deported, or plead not guilty and face up to two years in prison.

Valle-Callejas and most of the others took the deal.

While Valle-Callejas was in jail he lost his house in Guatemala, and now he and his family are homeless.

“I came back feeling desolate for the way they treated us,” he said.

Were they human trafficking victims as their advocates insist? No one knows, because they allegedly were never properly screened.

But once they were back home, some told Guatemalan officials they were exploited or abused and felt they were victims of forced labor, said Antonio Escobedo, director general of consular and migratory affairs in Guatemala City.

“There was absolutely no consideration of whether they were victims of trafficking, exploitation or child labor,” said Erik Camayd-Freixas, who served as a translator for the U.S. government after the Postville raid. “They all got the same raw deal.”

Still, many come back for more.

A Salvadoran who would only give his first name as Raoul said he already had been deported once. But this summer he was leaving a migrant shelter near the Guatemalan border in an effort to sneak back into the United States.

“In El Salvador I make $3 a day from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.,” Raoul told The Star as he prepared to ride a makeshift raft across the Suchiate River that divides Guatemala from Mexico.

Despite the risks of being deported again, Raoul said it’s worth it.

“People in the U.S. should know that we suffer on the way. We know the risks, and we know we broke the laws in the U.S. But that is better than what we have here.”

http://www.kansascity.com/975/story/1633621.html

Hostage House, Part 4: Armed men, just outside the door - KansasCity.com

By LAURA BAUER
The Kansas City Star
Posted on Tue, Dec. 15, 2009 10:15 PM

It’s 6:30 a.m. at the two-story drop house in Southern California, and men with guns are quietly circling outside.

The middle-aged woman from Central America — who came here looking for a better life but was enslaved in a human trafficking ring — is in the kitchen making coffee for her pregnant niece.

There is one last moment of silence in this dreaded place … and then, boom!

Within seconds, men are bursting through the front door and running from room to room, barking orders at sleepy-eyed immigrants. You can hear women screaming, children crying.

It’s like a movie.

For some reason, the aunt thinks this as the door comes down — the same door through which hundreds of victims have passed the last few years.

In their uniforms, with shielded masks over their faces, the men make their way to the kitchen. The aunt instinctively raises her hands in surrender. To whom she’s surrendering she doesn’t know.

This is a raid.

•••

Upstairs, men, women and children sleep piled on the floor. So many bodies that arms and legs overlap. Some people sit up as they sleep, just so more bodies can fit latticed across a dirty carpet.

A total of 60 immigrants are in the house. All controlled by the traffickers.

The niece is getting up as she hears the commotion downstairs.

La migra, she thinks. Immigration.

But at this point, eight months pregnant, she doesn’t care.

Just get us out of here.

After 10 months in this house, she doesn’t care if she’s sent back to Central America. She just wants to be free again. Anywhere.

Amid the tumult, a Spanish-speaking man walks through the house trying to calm everyone.

Don’t worry, relax, he tells them in Spanish. What we are doing is to help you guys out.

For many of the immigrants, this next part — where federal agents question them and sift traffickers from possible victims — is almost as scary as what they’ve already gone through.

Traffickers warned them about this day. Their words still resonate:

If you ever speak, we’ll catch you.

We know your family, we know where they live, they will pay the consequences.

They will send you back. We know people at immigration.

So many of them stay silent. Can they trust these uniformed agents? These men with guns telling them what to do? In their home countries, police are often part of the corruption.

Scared and confused, they can’t know that the raid is part of a three-year human smuggling investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Authorities will soon have three of the traffickers under arrest.

•••

The aunt? No problem, she’s ready to talk. She’s already given up so much, what more could she lose?

But the decision is not so easy for the niece, her story harder to tell.

The rape. The shame. She still hasn’t told her aunt about these things. And she’s thinking about the uncertain future she and her baby face. She just needs to think.

Her aunt is back in the kitchen, restless.

I’m hungry, she tells agents.

And there, in the same place where she cooked and cleaned for others, followed orders from men who stank and drank and did drugs, she serves herself breakfast.

First a glass of milk.

And then, without even thinking, she grabs the pan dulce, the sugary Mexican sweet bread that has been reserved for the traffickers.

On this morning, she takes a bite.

Because she can. Because, for the moment, she’s free.


http://www.kansascity.com/975/story/1633871.html

Hostage House, Part 2: A slave to time and money - KansasCity.com

By LAURA BAUER
The Kansas City Star
Posted on Sun, Dec. 13, 2009 10:15 PM

It’s 3 a.m. and another load of chickens is about to roll in.

“Chickens.” That’s what the human traffickers call them. These fresh loads of unwitting immigrants smuggled over the border and into southern California from points south.

The woman from Central America had been one of them once. She came here several summers ago in anticipation of landing a good job out east.

Then the traffickers derailed her plans, demanding more money. She’s counted a couple of birthdays in this run-down, two-story home in Los Angeles that serves as a way station for illegal immigrants, many of whom are pressed into servitude.

Most days, she follows the same routine. She gets up at 6 a.m., pulls herself off the grungy floor where she sleeps shoulder-to-shoulder with other hostages, cooks for everyone and cleans the house.

They watch her every move. She’s never left alone. Never allowed to talk to people on the outside.

Sometimes, she’s taken to clean other traffickers’ houses. At night, she and others are locked in a room. The men with guns and threats want to protect their property.

The days run together. But now, the end is in sight. Her traffickers have told her she’s almost paid off her debt.

Just four more months.

As she thinks about the new arrivals, the woman prepares coffee. She’ll tend to their needs, as she has done for nearly three years. But that connection she’s always shared with other victims is beginning to fade. Soon, she knows, she won’t be one of them.

For now, though, she must get up. There are new people to serve.

•••

The faces never seem to change.

The woman has seen hundreds of them. Some are hopeful, some weathered and weary, and others never get past dazed.

Scrawled along the walls of the house are the markers of their time here. Like prison inmates, they write names and dates as reminders of time served.

At the moment, she’s one of eight women held in this place. They are the cooking and cleaning crew, and it’s a full-time job.

The carpets are worn and dirty from the constant traffic. Food and dishes are scattered everywhere in this four-bedroom, two-bath drop house.

No one goes hungry here. The traffickers always provide plenty of staples. Beans and rice. Beef and chicken. Big bags of cheap Mexican bread for the immigrants. One item they cannot eat. Pan dulce, sugary Mexican sweet bread, is strictly for the men in charge.

For the woman, serving food is perhaps the one thing she enjoys. She understands what a hot meal means to the poor people dropped off here. It usually comes with a smile — a rare display of warmth in this grim place.

This morning, the delivery is earlier than normal.

They arrive dusty, after days without washing. On the exhausting trek, some pay the men 10 pesos for a bucket of water, just so they can wash away some of the trip.

These new arrivals keep showing up. They have no way of knowing what’s awaiting them here.

•••

She remembers what the men say when new people, especially young women, come into the house.

Let’s see what new merchandise we have.

The raping of young women is only part of the torture. Some immigrants are burned with cigarettes or subjected to electric shock. For many, walking through this door will be their last act of freedom until “debts” are paid in full.

They will at least get a day or two to rest. Then the demands for more money will come. The coyotes also will make phone calls to family members with orders to hand over cash.

Some will plan an escape. Most will fight through a jumble of emotions. Part of her job, as always, will be to calm the most agitated — the wailing or unruly — fearing that outbursts are contagious and will infect the entire group.

Four more months, she thinks.

The new arrivals file in, their squinting eyes adjusting from predawn darkness to the well-lit living room. Their feet are blistered and legs aching from the journey.

The woman scans their faces. They are like so many of the other faces.

Except one.

She has seen this face before. Back in Central America. Back in the house she shared with her sister and family.

For a moment, the anguish and fear and panic are so strong that the woman forgets her eyes can tell a story. Can they see the pain? The spark of recognition?

She pours the coffee, avoiding eye contact with one particular young woman. She hopes the men won’t notice her rapid breathing, the sudden rush of blood to her face.

For her, there is no one else in the room, no one else in the world. She can’t not look, it’s impossible. She hasn’t seen the young woman in three years, and this is the last place on earth she wants to see her now.

The world fell on me, she says to herself.

Their eyes lock. Her heart beating fast, the middle-aged woman prays the girl won’t say the word she must be thinking.

Tia. Aunt.

http://www.kansascity.com/959/story/1629021-p2.html