Tag Archives: Human Trafficking

Rapper ‘Diddy’s’ homes in LA and Miami raided by Homeland Security in connection with human trafficking

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Important Takeaways:

  • US official confirms to Fox News raids on Diddy’s homes are connected to a federal human trafficking investigation
  • The raid that occurred at the music mogul’s mansion in the Holmby Hills neighborhood.
  • “Investigators said across the coast, the music mogul’s Miami home was also raided Monday,” noted FOX.
  • “SkyFOX flew over Combs’ home Monday afternoon and showed federal agents conducting their investigation at his home.,” it added. “FOX 11’s ground crew at the scene said the home was registered to Bad Boys Films, which is a division of Bad Boy Entertainment, along with one of Combs’ daughters.”
  • People were seen coming out of the house and were subsequently detained.
  • Homeland Security expert Hal Kempfer told the outlet that there have been allegations of Combs drugging young women and the agency has been investigating crimes in multiple states.

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Save the Children charity finds one in three human trafficking victims are children and the number one exploitation form is sex

Important Takeaways:

  • One in Three Human Trafficking Victims are Children in Italy, Charity Reports
  • There were officially 757 new cases of trafficking and exploitation identified in 2021, according to the Save the Children charity, which found that one-third of victims were under the age of 18. The report, “Little Invisible Slaves”, also noted that there was more of a prevalence for victims to be females, who comprised 168 cases compared to 96 males.
  • The main country of origin of victims was Nigeria at 46.7 per cent, followed by Pakistan (8.5 per cent), Morocco (6.8 per cent), Brazil (4.5 per cent) and the Ivory Coast (3.3 per cent). Among the forms of exploitation, sexual was the most commonly recorded, comprising 38 per cent of victims, while labor represented 27.3 per cent.
  • It is the isolation in such farming regions that enables traffickers to more easily exploit children sexually, the report said, with abuse being easier to hide and “blend in better” in the countryside.
  • One instance cited was that of a little girl who was sold by her parents to her mother-in-law in exchange for 5,000 euros, a turkey, and some alcohol. The girl was ultimately sold to a child prostitution ring. While the mother-in-law was apprehended by the authorities, the parents who sold their child were said to have “disappeared”.

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Trump Did More to End Human Trafficking Than Any Modern President

Important Takeaways:

  • In February 2019, President Donald Trump met with Tom Ballard, a former special agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the founder of Operation Underground Railroad (OUR). Ballard was there to discuss the ongoing fight against human trafficking along the southern border.
  • By the time Ballard left the West Wing later that day, President Trump had appointed him to spearhead his White House Advisory Council to End Human Trafficking.
  • To date, Ballard and his team have rescued over 3,000 victims, leading to the arrest of 182 human traffickers. They are now the subject of the unlikely summer box office hit, Sound of Freedom, starring Jim Caviezel as Ballard.
  • In February 2017, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Enforcing Federal Law with Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking.” This order directed federal agencies to prioritize combating human trafficking and increase efforts to dismantle criminal organizations involved in trafficking.
  • President Trump signed the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) in April 2018. FOSTA aimed to hold websites accountable for facilitating sex trafficking by amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which previously shielded websites from legal liability for user-generated content.
  • President Trump established the Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
  • Arguably, the most significant achievement of President Trump’s administration in combating human trafficking was the shutdown of Backpage – a notorious website that facilitated sex trafficking, allowing individuals to post ads for illicit services, including the exploitation of minors.
  • President Trump’s commitment to combating human trafficking continued throughout his time in office.

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America is the second highest destination for Trafficked women

Romans 1:28 “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”

2 Timothy 4:3-4 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

Important Takeaways:

  • The Disturbing Reality of Human Trafficking and Children
  • Slavery is not dead at all. It is actually thriving and cashes in more than $8 million a year without any law that prohibits this type of slavery.
  • The total market value of illicit human trafficking is estimated to be in excess of $32 billion. Nearly 20,000 victims are sold and trafficked each year. This number includes the victims who are as young as 5 and 6 years of age.
  • According to UNICEF every two minutes a child is being prepared for sexual exploitation. 1.2 million children alone are being trafficked every year. This number excluded the millions already being held captive by trafficking. UNICEF also reports that approximately 30 million children have lost their childhood through sexual exploitation over the past 30 years.
  • People are trafficked from 127 countries and are exploited in 137 countries according to the United Nations.
  • America holds the title of “second highest destination in the world for trafficked women” (Wiehl, 2010). Between 14,500 and 17,500 victims are trafficked into the USA each year.
  • In most cases the average age of the prostitute or exploited victim is between 12 and 13 years old.
  • Catching predators in New York is also difficult because local officials have no authority under New York state law to arrest these people and protect their victims. Although Congress did pass the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in 2000, it was underfunded and without enough money to support the act, there was not enough money to provide law enforcement.

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A Survivor of Sex Trafficking speaks out on the reality of the porn industry

Romans 1:28 “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Sex Trafficking Survivor Speaks Out on Infamous ‘GirlsDoPorn’ Case, Reveals Horrors of Pornography Industry
  • She thought she was traveling from her hometown in Washington state to San Diego for a modeling job
  • Jane Doe, one of the dozens of women trapped in a sex trafficking operation that lasted more than a decade, is speaking out about the dark chapter that radically changed the trajectory of her life.
  • Her rapist, Ruben Andre Garcia, was sentenced in June 2021 to 20 years in prison.
  • Even as she’s seeing some level of justice served against those who trafficked her, Jane Doe’s pain is still very palpable.
  • She admitted to attempting suicide right before she testified in Garcia’s trial.
  • “I know it’s always going to be there,” she continued. “But we can bring education to people; we can bring it to the light of day and hopefully help people who have been through any sort of sexual trauma because there is hope in healing.
  • Jane Doe is hoping to expose the dark underbelly of the pornography industry “I don’t think that people understand that, when they go to the internet to get a ‘quick fix,’ they don’t understand that they might be participating in human trafficking”

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Night crossings: Germany braces as Belarus route swells migrant flows

By Thomas Escritt

EISENHUETTENSTADT, Germany (Reuters) – Zhina ran in the dead of night through a forest near the Belarusian-Polish border. Crucifix clenched in her pocket, she slipped with her mother and younger sister through a hole cut in the wire fence by men she believed were Belarusian police.

Last week, the 17-year-old from Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan arrived at a rapidly swelling refugee camp in eastern Germany, a few km (miles) from the Polish frontier. She was one of more than 100 refugees arriving each day as news of the Belarus corridor to Europe spreads around the Middle East.

Authorities in Brandenburg, the eastern German state that is housing most of the new arrivals, are calling for tougher action against what they see as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s hybrid war against the European Union – allowing migrants to filter through Belarusian borders into Poland or neighboring Baltic states in retaliation for EU sanctions.

“We are just managing the symptoms here,” said Michael Stuebgen, Brandenburg’s interior minister. “The actual problem is the people smuggling organized by the Belarus regime.”

All Iraqis now know about the Belarusian route to the EU, said Zhina’s mother Nihaya, who paid traffickers $15,000 to arrange the journey for herself and her daughters.

Facing crippling sanctions over his violent crackdown on protests over his disputed re-election victory last year, Lukashenko has opened his country’s borders to much of the Middle East and Africa, knowing that many will use the opportunity to pass through into the EU, starting with Poland.

In August, Stuebgen said, 200 arrived from Belarus at the camp in Eisenhuettenstadt, on Germany’s border with Poland. Now, 100-150 are arriving daily. Many are in a bad way – of 120 who arrived on Wednesday, seven tested positive for COVID-19.

Poland and Lithuania have erected fences along their border with Belarus, but few refugees want to stop in either country.

DESTINATION: GERMANY VIA POLAND

Under EU asylum rules, they have to stay in the first EU country they are registered in – so refugees wanting to live in affluent Germany – the most desirable destination for many EU-bound migrants – to dodge the authorities on the way there.

“Everything happened after midnight: it was too dangerous during the day,” said Zhina, describing how men, whom she believed to be Belarusian policemen, had trucked her and dozens of other migrants to the border and cut a hole through the fence to let them into Poland.

The three sneaked through forest on the Polish side of the border, dodging border guards flashing torches, hitching rides or getting driven by smugglers across Poland, thereby avoiding registration there, before reaching Germany.

The crucifix, a gift from her mother, was safely stowed in her pocket out of fear its chain would snag on a branch.

Her mother dreams of settling in Hamburg, where Zhina wants to study engineering at university. If successful, she and her 12-year-old sister Zhino will join the million or so migrants who settled in Germany in 2015, many of whom are now thriving.

But Brandenburg, which has the headache of settling the hundreds of new arrivals in a former police barracks that it has tripled in size with the aid of heated tents, is calling for firmer action from the German government and the EU.

Stuebgen called for “a landing ban in all of Europe for all airlines that contribute to this human trafficking” – which could include Belarus’s Belavia, which flew Zhina from Istanbul to Minsk, but also Gulf airlines, officials said.

(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

In a first, U.S. warns of dangers of systemic racism in human trafficking report

By Daphne Psaledakis and Jonathan Landay

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An annual U.S. State Department report released on Thursday said discriminatory policies perpetuated human trafficking, drawing a link between the two for the first time.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in the Trafficking in Persons report that systemic racism creates inequities, in turn undercutting Washington’s battle against human trafficking.

A State Department official said it was the first time the report drew a connection to systemic racism.

The United States has been re-examining its treatment of African Americans since nationwide protests last year sparked by the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer.

U.S. authorities have warned of increased threats from white supremacist groups.

“While U.S. efforts to combat human trafficking have grown in magnitude and sophistication over the years, the United States still struggles with how to address the disparate effects of human trafficking on racial minority communities,” the report said.

It cited the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on human trafficking, as traffickers capitalized on the pandemic and governments diverted resources to fight the health crisis.

The report looked at countries and territories and ranked them into four tiers, downgrading countries such as Ethiopia but upgrading others.

ETHIOPIA

The United States faulted Ethiopia for not demonstrating increased efforts to eliminate trafficking.

The report highlighted the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region that has killed thousands of people, displaced more than 2 million people and pushed hundreds of thousands to the brink of famine.

The report said that since the conflict began in November, international organizations increasingly reported armed actors were responsible for committing human rights abuses and gender-based violence, including potential trafficking crimes.

Ethiopians seeking asylum in Sudan were increasingly vulnerable to trafficking and unaccompanied children in the conflict areas may be vulnerable to recruitment by non-state armed groups, the report also warned.

BELARUS

Belarus was cited for “key achievements” even if, as the report said, resident Alexander Lukashenko’s government did not “fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.”

The report made no mention of Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown on ongoing protests over his claim of victory in a 2020 presidential election widely seen as being rigged.

SAUDI ARABIA

Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, was cited for “making significant efforts” toward eliminating human trafficking, the report said.

However, the government failed to meet minimum standards in a number of areas, including fining, jailing and deporting foreign workers for prostitution or immigration violations even though many may have been trafficking victims, the report said.

ISRAEL

The report said Israel, Washington’s closest Middle Eastern ally, had worked to eliminate human trafficking, but its efforts “were not serious and sustained” compared to the previous reporting period even accounting for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Victim identification policies “sometimes re-traumatized” victims and delayed their access to necessary care, sometimes for years, while the government reduced its overall efforts to investigate, prosecute and convict traffickers, it said.

Official policies toward foreign workers “increased their vulnerability to trafficking,” the report said, while the only police unit officially charged with identifying trafficking victims remained under-staffed for a fifth straight year.

TURKEY

The United States added Turkey to the list of countries implicated in the use of child soldiers over the past year, placing a NATO ally for the first time in such a list, in a move likely to further complicate fraught ties between Ankara and Washington.

MALAYSIA

The State Department downgraded Malaysia to the worst ranking after a string of complaints by rights groups and U.S. authorities over the alleged exploitation of migrant workers in plantations and factories.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Jonathan Landay, Doyinsola Oladipo and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Phil Stewart and Howard Goller)

Trafficked ‘brides’ stuck in China due coronavirus after fleeing abuse

Reuters
By Matt Blomberg

PHNOM PENH (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Coronavirus travel restrictions have forced anti-trafficking groups to suspend rescue operations of Vietnamese and Cambodian “brides” from China, with some now in hiding having escaped the homes of men holding them against their will.

Over the past decade, tens of thousands of Southeast Asian women have been lured to China by criminal networks promising lucrative jobs, only to be sold as brides – some to abusive men – as China grapples with a gender imbalance.

Charities in Vietnam and Cambodia said some women who fled this year have been detained and shut off from communication, while others who are “not under immediate threat of being killed” have been advised to sit tight.

“Some say the husband is mentally ill, they’re being beaten, maybe prostituted to the neighbours, their lives are in immediate danger at this point,” said Michael Brosowski, head of Hanoi-based Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation.

“They say they have to go, they have to go now. All we can do is advise them on a safe place to hide.”

Blue Dragon rescued one women every three days on average from China in 2019, but was forced to freeze operations in late January as coronavirus travel restrictions took hold.

“Getting to remote places, it’s just not possible now – and even if you could, the borders are closed,” Brosowski told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

While Blue Dragon remains in touch with 27 women who have called for help in 2020, Phnom Penh-based anti-trafficking charity Chab Dai said it has lost contact with some who fled their abusers amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Chab Dai programme manager Chan Saron said in early January, one women reported being transferred to “government-controlled detention” and held “under very strict conditions” before contact was lost.

“According to Chinese law, survivors are often treated as illegal migrants,” Saron said. “We receive dozens of cases like this but there could be many more.”

A Chinese assistant to the Cambodian consul in Shanghai said little could be done to assist women who had escaped their captors and were now uncontactable.

“If we can get in touch with the women, we will find a way to help,” she said, giving her name only as Hayley. “But with no information, how could we find them?”

Authorities in Cambodia, Vietnam and China have in recent years tried to combat the trafficking of “brides” but campaigners fear a ban on marriage broker services has driven the trend further underground and put women at higher risk.

Chinese men typically pay brokers between $10,000 and $20,000 for a foreign wife, a 2016 United Nations report said.

Criminal gangs scour poor regions for young women and pitch a dream life in China, where there is a surplus of some 40 million men – a legacy of Beijing’s one-child policy.

Targets are coaxed by the promise of a life of relative luxury in China, and while some do marry happily and send money home to their families, others end are facing sexual abuse, violence and exploitation.

(Reporting by Matt Blomberg, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Migrants raped and trafficked as U.S. and Mexico tighten borders, charity says

By Christine Murray

MEXICO CITY (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Central American migrants are being kidnapped, raped and trafficked in Mexico as they seek to enter the United States amid a migration crackdown, a medical charity said on Tuesday.

In Mexico’s Nuevo Laredo city – separated from the United States by the Rio Grande – almost 80% of migrants treated by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the first nine months of 2019 said they had been victims of violence, including kidnapping.

“They’re treated as if they aren’t really people,” Sergio Martin, Mexico coordinator for MSF, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “They’ve suffered violence … and what they find on their journey is more violence.”

Mexico has ramped up efforts to stop Central American migrants, often fleeing violent crime and poverty, reaching the U.S. border under pressure from President Donald Trump who threatened to put import tariffs on its goods.

It has deployed the National Guard to stop migrants crossing northwards and increased detentions and deportations.

Mexico’s immigration authority and interior ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said he wants to apply immigration laws while respecting migrants’ human rights.

The United States has sent 57,000 non-Mexican migrants back to Mexico to await their U.S. asylum hearings, restricted asylum criteria and limited the number of claims it receives daily at each port of entry.

In September, 18 of 41 patients in Nuevo Laredo who had been sent back to Mexico to wait for U.S. asylum processing told MSF they had recently been kidnapped.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We think that as a direct result of many of these policies there are people who are suffering more violence,” said Martin.

“It’s easier for them to fall into human trafficking networks or into extortion networks, and no one look for them.”

MSF found 78% of almost 3,700 patients in Mexico who sought mental health care in 2018 and 2019 showed signs of exposure to violence, including assault, sexual violence and torture.

Some patients said they had been kidnapped in Mexico for long periods for forced labour, sexual exploitation or recruitment to work for criminal groups.

Almost one in four female migrants told MSF they had experienced sexual violence on their journeys.

The MSF data was based on some 26,000 health consultations with migrants in 2018 and 2019, testimonials and a survey.

(Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Daughter’s murder led activist to hunt for Mexico’s disappeared

By Christine Murray

(Thomson Reuters Foundation) – When a worried parent calls for help finding a missing child, Norma Ledezma says she often immediately has a sense of whether they are likely to be found alive.

Seventeen years after her daughter Paloma disappeared in northern Mexico, Ledezma has helped hundreds of families cope with the psychological and legal aftermath such cases, and experience has taught her how to react.

“You have to learn to understand human behavior, the victim’s environment, the possible perpetrator’s environment,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“We’ve found a lot dead and unfortunately most are still missing, that’s the reality.”

The former factory worker, who left school at 11 but has completed a law degree since becoming a campaigner, is one of three finalists for the 2020 Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders.

The 53-year-old founded her organization Justice for our Daughters in 2002 and has had some success.

She succeeded in getting the government to name a justice center for women was named after Paloma, who was 16 when she went missing. She has also helped locate some victims alive, including several who were being trafficked.

Most, however, are never found.

Mexico’s president has promised justice for the more than 40,000 people who disappeared in the country, many in the last decade of corruption and violence fuelled by drug gangs.

But civil society groups have said the government is yet to implement the measures it promised.

They have often stepped in to do the job of authorities – particularly where investigators are unwilling or unable to take on organized crime.

Collectives of mothers who have lost children have scoured the Mexican countryside armed with shovels following tips of where mass graves might hold their loved ones.

About one in four of those listed as missing are women, though the government said earlier this year it was reviewing the data.

Ledezma said the government had no strategy to fix the issue.

The government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this year it said it would allow the United Nations to review reports on cases of disappearances.

Paloma left the house for school in March 2002 and never came home. Her killer was never found.

When her body was found, authorities did not run DNA tests on her, instead relying on clothing samples and the color of her nail polish. Ledezma could not bring herself to go into the room where her body lay.

“I saw very concretely, very clearly the impunity and the lack of justice…that unfortunately is still missing in Chihuahua and Mexico,” she said.

It was on the day of Paloma’s funeral that Ledezma decided to help those who seek justice for similar cases and she has pressed on despite threats from organized criminals.

“I haven’t left the country because I have a debt to my daughter… I’ll be here until the last day”, she said.

The 2020 Martin Ennals Award, named after the British activist who ran Amnesty International, will be given to one of the three finalists on Feb. 19 in Geneva.

(Reporting by Christine Murray, Editing by Claire Cozens. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)