Drawing of a child separated from a city by a wall where can be visualize the silhouette of adults holding hands with a child. File photo.
By Francisco Arias Fernández – Sep 19, 2022
The International Labor Organization estimates there are 24.9 million victims of trafficking globally, a criminal activity that generates around $150 billion annually in illicit profits.
Online Internet prostitute services; foreign and resident women victims of smuggling, forced and coerced to work in the sex industry; regular customers; pimps; online child traffickers; lifeguards, computer scientists and corrupt Disney amusement park waiters; and other collateral merchants were part of an alarming police finding in early 2022.
More than 100 people, several Disney employees included, were arrested in an undercover human trafficking operation in Central Florida. This is neither an isolated or rare occurrence nor unique to the touristy U.S. state.
Human trafficking is a growing concern in Florida, a territory that ranks third in the United States for the impact of this scourge with serious consequences as it often victimizes children, according to an article titled in Spanish El tráfico humano: la cara oscura del estado del sol (human trafficking: the dark side of the sunshine state) published in the regional newspaper Orlando Sentinel.
A report by French television station France 24 revealed that, in 2019, around 400,000 people in the United States were victims of human trafficking every day. Five years ago that figure was 60,000, which shows an uncontrolled boom. It adds that this problem attacks the country by stealth, and few victims dare to speak out. Official reports show that child prostitution in the United States is a concern, as it is estimated that 100,000 minors are forced into prostitution in the country each year.
On the other hand, although the law prohibits certain types of prostitution, different categories of domestic or foreign, who are forced or deceived into this world most time, proliferate throughout the United Sates. However, law enforcement agencies have identified street prostitution, escort or off-duty prostitution, brothel prostitution, massage parlors, strip clubs, sex stores, shows and clubs.
Last April, the U.S. law and order forces dismantled a sex trafficking network controlled from New York, which for three years exploited Asian women in vulnerable situations and without legal immigration status, who were victims of brutal assaults in a dozen states of that country. The criminal network kept them in hotels or apartments under their control where they were sexually exploited for weeks, and then reinvested the money collected in their illegal activities. They imposed discipline by beating them with hammers, baseball bats or guns, by tying them up or by isolating them, threatening them, and stripping them of their identity documents, among other physical and sexual abuses.
Migrants are sold for up to us$700 to be enslaved
Criminal groups operating in U.S. territory under the guise of migrant placement agencies sell them to U.S. ranchers and businessmen to be treated as slaves.
An investigation by the Mexican newspaper Milenio, based on judicial documents from U.S. courts, reveals that just one of the organizations dedicated to the sale of these “modern slaves” made profits of 200 million dollars in just four years.
After migrants cross the border, these mafias often steal their identity documents, personal papers and collect information about their families back home. In this way, they intimidate them into not escaping.
They keep the migrants in camps with electrified fences, where they are mistreated in multiple ways, are forced to work without pay and are given little water, which constitutes labor exploitation and human trafficking. According to the newspaper, this situation repeats in camps in Georgia, Wisconsin, Florida and Texas, where 34 leaders of criminal groups have been prosecuted.
The new slavers operate mainly in the agricultural sector, one of the areas that employs thousands of migrants in the United States, although in other cases they have been forced to grow crops and sell drugs.
The article also reveals that when they arrive in US territory, they are sold to US ranchers for up to $700 and forced to work.
It adds that the fishing, textile, construction, mining and agricultural industries are particularly full of forced laborers, including some who arrived on scholarships or work visas.
The New York Times published an article on July 26 entitled Migrant smuggling at the border is now a multi-million dollar business, in which it points out that, with demand for smugglers on the rise, organized crime has moved in, with cruel and violent results.
The fees paid to smugglers typically range from $4,000, for migrants coming from Latin America, to $20,000, if they must be moved from Africa, Eastern Europe or Asia, according to an expert at George Mason University.
The researcher adds that the increase in irregular migrants who try to cross the U.S. border made migrant smuggling an irresistible moneymaker for some cartels for some cartels and criminal organizations operating inside and outside the United States, an industry whose profits have risen from $500 million in 2018 to $13 billion or more today.
$150 billion annual illicit business
The International Labor Organization estimates that globally there are 24.9 million victims of trafficking, a criminal activity that generates around $150 billion annually in illicit profits.
Academics and experts gathered at the Seventh Latin American and Caribbean Congress on Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling affirmed in early July that following drug trafficking, human trafficking and prostitution, the maximum expression of trafficking, represent the second and third industries among the world’s illicit economies.
A Spanish professor said at the event that prostitution has become a product for exporting women for sexual exploitation to prostitution tourism markets, involving generations of women, girls and adolescents from poor countries, and a huge business for international mafias and pimps.
In addition to kidnapping to gain access to “child merchandise,” traffickers have increased their use of the Internet and close associates.
The United States lacks moral authority to judge others
Following the presentation of the U.S. State Department’s annual (unilateral) report on human trafficking, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla affirmed that the U.S. government lacks moral authority and deliberately lies about Cuba’s performance against this scourge, for which reason he rejected the unjustified inclusion of the island in this black list, which is entirely based on political reasons.
The atrocities experienced in the U.S. by the hundreds of thousands of victims of human trafficking, prostitutes, irregular migrants, the new slaves of the ranchers and minors forced to work, work as prostitute or traffic drugs in all the states of the Union, are merely occasional news in the media under the control of the White House at world level, that gives them the credit for successful operations of confrontation with the law enforcement authorities, but almost never vindicate or defend the victims.
The human rights organization Human Rights Watch, in its World Report 2022, reports that the current Democratic administration had carried out 753,038 removals under Title 42, an illegal policy to expel migrants who arrive at land borders based on specious health grounds.
It points out that these removals disproportionately discriminate against black, indigenous and Latino migrants, particularly from Central America, Africa and Haiti, while thousands of other travelers are allowed to cross the border without any health checks.
In times of the worst global economic and migratory crisis, the multi-million profits of the human trafficking and prostitution mafias, like those of drug trafficking, remain in the U.S. banks and other old slave owners of the North, who modernize methods to cover labor shortages, where organized crime has its place according to U.S. and Western pragmatism.
Meanwhile, they erect border and consular walls as an expression of their selectivity, which continues to stimulate the dark and uncertain paths of those who try to reach the U.S. at any cost, seeking the promised better life. Photo: Caricature
(Granma)
