Showing posts with label South Florida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Florida. Show all posts
Friday, October 17, 2014
South Florida man traveled to Colombia for sex with underage girls, feds say - Sun Sentinel
Federal agents have arrested a South Florida man they said made several trips to South America to have sex and make child pornography videos with underage girls.
Dennis DeJesus, 45, of North Lauderdale, was arrested at his home Saturday on child "sex tourism" allegations. He was caught in a major international undercover investigation in Colombia and the U.S. that resulted in the weekend arrests of 11 Colombians on child sex-trafficking charges.
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South Florida man traveled to Colombia for sex with underage girls, feds say - Sun Sentinel:
Monday, January 31, 2011
South Florida Country Clubs Contracting in Slave Labor: Feds | NBC Miami
A husband and wife are accused of forcing 39 Philippine immigrants into slavery
By WILLARD SHEPARD and TODD WRIGHT
Updated 2:43 PM EST, Tue, Jan 11, 2011
Updated 2:43 PM EST, Tue, Jan 11, 2011
Country clubs are often reserved for the rich and well off and have the best amenities money can buy.
But membership in several exclusive South Florida clubs came with a sinister perk that has the feds working overtime - slavery.
Federal agents claim Alfonso Baldonado Jr. and his wife, Sophia Manuel, are behind an elaborate scheme that forced 39 Filipino workers into slave labor at local country clubs.
The couple allegedly ran a company called Quality Staffing Services based in Boca Raton and sent the workers to posh clubs to work incredibly long hours with little pay.
"What people need to realize that it is happening here in Miami and at an alarming rate," Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent Carmen Pino said. "It's a big problem here and there is human trafficking. This is slave labor and even sex trafficking."
The feds singled out the pricey Indian Creek Country Club on Miami Beach and Miami Shores Country Club as frequent clients of the slave labor company.
Nine other golf courses in Broward and Palm Beach counties also contracted with Baldonado, but investigators have not said whether any of the clients knew of the illegal activity.
Several golf coursed didn't return phone calls from NBCMiami on Monday, but I.C.E. said managers they interviewed claimed they hired the employment firm without really knowing where the contracted workforce was coming from.
The agents found out about the troubling trend when they received a call about a hostage situation. They found workers living in terrible conditions with 20 illegal aliens forced to live together in a small home.
The illegal laborers worked 16 hours a day every day of the week. And while some received virtually nothing, most were required to pay back the firm from he little wages they received, Pino said.
The husband and wife team are now behind bars on human trafficking charges.
For more on stopping human trafficking go to http://www.ice.gov/human-trafficking/.
ICE also has a hotline to report possible slave labor, 1-866-dhs-2ice.
First Published: Jan 10, 2011 4:37 PM EST
South Florida Country Clubs Contracting in Slave Labor: Feds | NBC Miami
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Over 50 Haitians Found Enslaved in Florida's Farms | End Human Trafficking | Change.org
July 08, 2010 12:00 PM (PT) Topics: Slave Labor
While there has been much discussion of the increased human trafficking in Haiti following the earthquake, 2010 is by no means the beginning of slavery for Haitian people. This week, court documents were unsealed which indicate over 50 Haitian nationals were trafficked to the U.S. and forced into farm work in 2008. And what the traffickers did to keep their slaves hidden from prying eyes was extraordinary, if not uncommon in modern-day slavery.
Three Haitian nationals, one of whom had been a long-time farm worker in the South Florida area, were accused of trafficking dozens of their countrymen into the U.S. to force them into farm labor. Back in Haiti, the workers were offered lucrative jobs with the U.S. guest worker program (which, incidentally, has been often criticized for its frequent use in human trafficking). The visas were false, though. Once in the U.S., workers' travel documents were confiscated, effectively confining them to their work sites. They suffered from poor food and sanitation conditions, and were made to work in fields so recently sprayed with chemicals that some of them left with permanent scars. One of the female workers even reported being raped on the job.
When the farms where the workers were enslaved were inspected by federal agents, the traffickers forced the men and women to put on drumming and dancing shows for the inspectors, threatening that anyone who didn't look happy would be deported to Haiti. They also hid workers at a nearby Walmart to fool inspectors as to the number of people working on the farm and how much they were being paid. During the rare times inspectors were able to communicate with the workers, one of the traffickers acted as interpreter, claiming that the federal inspectors gave them permission to withhold food from the workers. Eventually, however, the inspectors and local law enforcement were able to identify the horrible and dangerous working conditions, and arrested those responsible. But for too long, Haitian slaves remained hidden in plain view.
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