Fear of deportation stops human trafficking victims from reporting crimes, officials say - NY Daily News

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/fear-deportation-stops-immigrants-reporting-crimes-article-1.1051967

Source: NY Daily News

Most of 5,000 special T visas available to them go unclaimed

BY ERICA PEARSON / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 11:29 AM

JEANNE NOONAN FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

From left: Julie Dinnerstein, Sanctuary for Families’ Immigration Intervention Project; Lynn Boudreau, assistant center director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Vermont Service Center; Scott Whelan, Office of Policy and Strategy, USCIS and Andrea Quarantillo, district director of the Queens USCIS Center, discuss assistance for victims of human trafficking and violent crimes.

Fear of deportation stops many immigrants who are victims of crimes or trafficking from reporting to authorities what happened.

Trafficking survivors, in particular, are so wary of coming forward that the pool of 5,000 special T visas available to them each year go largely unassigned. Just 557 were approved last year. Officials believe thousands more immigrants are out there who haven’t found help.

“They’re right in front of us and we don’t even know it,” said Scott Whelan, an officer at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Office of Policy and Strategy.

Whelan and other USCIS officials are touring the country — from Los Angeles to Boston to Queens in New York — to spread the word about T visas and other special visas that let immigrant victims who help law enforcement stay in the U.S.

They stopped in the agency’s new Long Island City office last week to teach cops, immigration agents, community groups and nonprofits more about the benefits available to victims.

Dozens of staffers from groups like Sanctuary for Families, Safe Horizon, Kids in Need of Defense and Legal Aid showed up for the training, which is part of a Homeland Security anti-human trafficking project called the “Blue Campaign.”

While T visas are just for survivors of labor or sex trafficking, the feds give U visas to immigrants who are victims of serious crimes.

As co-director of nonprofit Sanctuary for Families’ Immigration Intervention Project, Julie Dinnerstein has counseled many clients to alert police or testify before a grand jury without fear of deportation after terrible misfortunes.

In one shocking case, an undocumented Mexican immigrant mom living in the Bronx came into Dinnerstein’s office last year and told her she’d discovered that her boyfriend had repeatedly raped her 10-year-old daughter.

“The child rapist had been telling this little girl that if she said anything to the police or her schoolteachers, to her mother, that her mother would be deported and that she and all of her siblings would end up in foster care,” said Dinnerstein.

“And of course, the child was terrified. The reality of what happened when she finally told is actually quite different.”

Dinnerstein said her group is now working with the feds to secure U-visas for the family.

Lynn Boudreau, an assistant center director at USCIS’ Vermont Service Center, where all victim-related petitions from around the country are filed, said a growing number of immigrants are securing U visas.

For the past two years, the agency has awarded all of the 10,000 U visas available each year.

Before then, many went unused. If pending legislation to renew the federal Violence Against Women Act is approved, the feds will raise the cap for the next few years and give out U visas from past years that were never awarded.

epearson@nydailynews.com

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How One Woman is Fighting Trafficking in NYC ... and Winning | End Human Trafficking | Change.org

by Amanda Kloer November 22, 2010 11:30 AM (PT)

What could make a woman with a masters degree from Columbia University spend a year making no salary, living off cottage cheese and apples, and periodically asking herself if she's insane? For Faith Huckel, it was the determined drive to meet a desperate need in New York City — a shelter for women trafficked into the commercial sex industry. Her story is one of how a woman turned her passion into a fresh start for hundreds of trafficking and abuse survivors.

As a social worker in Philadelphia, Huckel began noticing a pattern among the women whose cases she managed — sexual exploitation. In addition to issues like poverty, incarceration, and HIV, most of the women she worked with had been sexually exploited at some point in their lives. Some were molested as children, others raped as adults, still others pushed into the commercial sex industry by coercion or circumstance. When Huckel moved to New York City, that pattern added a new dimension — the sex trafficking of women from overseas into the U.S.

So when she and a group of friends were talking around a dinner table about what they would do to change the world, Huckel immediately knew she'd want to address sex trafficking. After asking around the city, one need above all others became clear: there was no shelter in New York City for foreign women to feel safe while they healed from violence and abuse. So in 2008, Huckel quit her lucrative job and applied herself full-time to creating a shelter, even though it meant a lot of cottage cheese and a lot more telling herself she wasn't crazy.

Today, she has proof she's both sane and successful. Restore NYC is the first ever long-term safe house for international trafficking victims in New York City, and one of the few in the country. To date they have served over 100 women, mostly from China and Korea. Many of these women were brought to the U.S. under student or tourist visas, saddled with inflated debts up to $60,000, and forced into prostitution to pay back those debts. But now they have a place to heal from the abuse with 24-hour, live-in support staff fluent in Korean and Mandarin and help dealing with everything from immigration paperwork to trauma.

But nothing makes the success of Restore NYC real to Huckel as much as the story of one survivor we'll call "Jing Li". Jing Li is a 20 year old woman trafficked from China and forced into the commercial sex industry. When police found her in a brothel in New York, they immediately identified her as a trafficking victim and connected her with Huckel. For awhile, she was working with a lawyer to get a T-Visa and receiving support from Restore NYC. Then one day, she vanished. Huckel soon received a phone call that Jing Li had been arrested in Washington, D.C. for prostitution. Huckel spent weeks trying to convince Jing Li there was a safe house in New York where she could live for free and where people would help her get back on her feet. But so much in Jing Li's life had been a lie, so many offers had come with a terrible catch, she refused to believe the place existed until she saw it. Once she took a tour, Jing Li was sold. She moves in November 23, and is now planning to get her GED and go to college.

Huckel says getting to where Jing Li is isn't easy. Survivors have to overcome immigration issues, PTSD, language barriers, lack of basic education and employable skills, racism, and the stigma behind prostitution, in addition to the mental, emotional, and physical trauma of sex trafficking. But at Restore NYC, they have a community of volunteers who make that a possibility. And it's thanks to these people who were willing to do something to end human trafficking that Jing Li and her peers have a chance to start over. As Huckel says,

"N0 matter how big problems may seem, don't throw your arms in the air and think you can't do anything. We have a responsibility, when we see injustice, to act and not to walk away. Whatever you can do, do it, even if it's in a small way."

Faith Huckel knows about big and small. Restore NYC may be a small organization but they're having a big impact in the fight against human trafficking, one survivor at a time.

GOT A TIP FOR US? Is there a story or campaign in your area that we'd want to know about? E-mail us at humantraffickingtips@change.org

Photo credit: leunix

Amanda Kloer is a Change.org Editor and has been a full-time abolitionist in several capacities for seven years. Follow her on Twitter @endhumantraffic

Source: End Human Trafficking

How One Woman is Fighting Trafficking in NYC ... and Winning | End Human Trafficking | Change.org

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News 8 Austin APD arrests 2 men for holding immigrants for ransom

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Updated: 1/5/2010 7:57 AM
By: News 8 Austin Staff


Immigrants were held captive by smugglers at the Mi Casa apartments on Duval Street.
The Austin Police Department arrested two men accused of human trafficking Friday and charges were filed Monday morning.

Police said Jose Luis Perez and Santiago Cruz Ramirez were holding people against their will in Austin.

According to officials, a Honduran man called 911 from the Haven Food Mart on East St. John Avenue Friday. He told police that he was being held captive by smugglers at the Mi Casa apartments on Duval Street.

He said the "coyotes" were holding him against his will, with no food or water, until his family paid a $2,100 ransom. A "coyote" is a term for a person who illegally transports immigrants across the border for a price.

"He said that his family was being told that they had to pay a ransom for him to be set free, and if his family didn't pay the ransom, they threatened him with bodily injury," spokesperson for Austin Police Department, Corporal Scott Perry, said.

The victim said he was able to jump through a window and call for help. When police went to the apartment to investigate, they found at least four other victims who claimed to be held against their will.

The other victims told the same story that the original victim told. They said the "coyotes" smuggled them into the country, then held them to try and extort money from their families.

Officials said this was not an isolated incident.

Carmen Cortes-Harms is the Director of Immigration Legal Services at Catholic Charities of Central Texas.

She said people don't always get what they're promised when they come to the United States.

"The families in their home countries, they don't know what�s happening and people get threats, so they're really afraid to speak and seek any help. It can happen to anybody who comes into this country and is trying to better their life," Cortes-Harms said.

David Taguacta was outside the Haven Food Mart when the victim arrived.

"He was held hostage, and he had no choice but to break that window to get out. At least he came to the right place, right here," Taguacta said.

APD is still looking into whether there are other victims or suspects. They're also trying to determine if there were other people involved in getting the victims to the apartment, and if that was their final destination, or just a stopping point.


According to officials, a Honduran man called 911 from the Haven Food Mart on East St. John Avenue Friday.
Human trafficking victims can be given a T visa.

A T visa allows them to remain in the U.S. as long as they assist in the investigation and prosecution of human trafficking cases.

The investigation remains ongoing. All the victims have been released into the care of relatives.


News 8 Austin | 24 Hour Local News | HEADLINES | APD arrests 2 men for holding immigrants for ransom

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