Tu Revista Latina Magazine

Human Trafficking. How to Free the Land of Enslavement

We live in a society where freedom is often taken for granted; where slavery is something most of us never think about. Our society is one where the heinous beating of slaves by their owners offers an image displayed only in historical times. We live in a society that is very much unaware of the seriousness of a crime that is still alive today and gaining momentum around the world.

According to the United Nations, the estimated 27 million slaves in the world today surpass the slave count in over 400 years of its existence in the United States. Modern-day slaves differ from historical slavery in many ways, including in their cost. At its prime, Southern slave owners paid roughly $30,000 (today’s money) for an African slave. Therefore, the slave owner desired to maintain the slave’s well-being as an investment to breed more slaves. Contrarily, modern-day slaves sell for as low as $100 and it is common for slaves to have multiple owners throughout their slavery. I make this point, not to minimize the horror of historical slavery, but to demonstrate the significance of modern-day slavery and its existence.

Human smuggling is not human trafficking but they are often confused as synonyms. Human smuggling is a business transaction that entails an illegal crossing of an international border for an agreed fee. Human trafficking is against one’s will and does not require the crossing of an international border. However, human smuggling can turn into human trafficking if the coyote refuses to let the illegal immigrant leave after the human smuggling occurs and forces them into work, essentially making them a slave.

Mexico is often a transit country for human trafficking victims to enter into the United States. According to the Department of State’s annual 2011 Trafficking in Persons Report, most of the United States human trafficking victims come from Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico. They are often poor, uneducated, and come from an area in political turmoil. The lack of jobs, government corruption and lower standard of living pushes these vulnerable people into desperate situations to provide for their families. An offer from a friend helps lure their minds away from their current desolate times with promises of money, better schools for their kids, and a dream to raise a family in the United States. All too often, these job offers are fictitious with slave labor wages—if any compensation at all.

Husbands and fathers may sell their own wives and children to traffickers without fully realizing the fate that awaits them. Human traffickers often tell parents that their young daughters will learn an honest profession, but the traffickers quickly rape and force the girls into prostitution acts, regardless of age and they will beat victims who refuse to surrender to slavery.

“Timming” is a term used by pimps who stomp on their victims with their Timberlake boots into submission. Traffickers also tattoo their victims, as a cowboy will brand his cattle to claim ownership. They will also threaten to tell the victims’ families of their current prostitute status and to send them videos of their sexual acts. Lastly, and most heinously, the traffickers terrorize their victims with constant threats of trafficking the victims’ children or other family members into slavery if the victims should runaway, or not comply.

Human trafficking does not require a foreign victim. Actually, several of Albuquerque’s sex trafficking victims were domestically trafficked from other states. Where international victims tend to originate from corrupted and poor societies, domestic victims are runways or throwaways fleeing from troubled homes plagued with domestic violence and substance abuse. Traffickers prey on these vulnerable women and children and coerce them into prostitution acts. The victims, who already possess a low self-esteem from their abusive homes, receive their slavery as further damnation. Worse, the often-neglected children, who never experienced a parent’s sincere love, receive only a fictitious admiration from a trafficker that leads to a loss of innocence.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, modern slavery exceeds over 100,000 persons in the United States. Special Agent Ida D’Antonio who works the Civil Rights/Human Trafficking Violations unit in Las Cruces, is currently working three cases of human trafficking. The 15-year Hispanic veteran formed one of the first human trafficking task forces in New Mexico. The task force unites law enforcement with local service providers to prevent human trafficking in the southern New Mexico area. The fruits of this successful task force also created another human trafficking task force in Albuquerque.

Special Agent D’Antonio also plans to form a network with local clergy, who quite possibly will assist human trafficking victims. She will offer the clergy information on human trafficking in order to treat its victims. This grassroots community involvement led by Special Agent D’Antonio will certainly raise awareness in southern New Mexico where diversification of human trafficking victims proves evident.

In recent months, the FBI charged a couple for human trafficking two Indonesian women, who allegedly worked in a local Las Cruces hotel for no pay. Also pending, is a Las Cruces massage parlor, allegedly served as a front for prostitution of which the prostitutes may actually be sex trafficking victims. Lastly, a Guatemalan man human smuggled via Mexico, and later human trafficked into New Mexico as a migrant worker. All of the victims came to this nation seeking the American dream but instead found themselves living an American nightmare.

According to CNN, the Mexican government arrested more than a 1,000 people for human trafficking offenses in just 9 hours, this past summer in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Human trafficking victims can be women or children forced or coerced into sex slavery, or men, who receive little or no pay for their labor.

RELEASE (Restore Liberty Everywhere Abolish Slavery and Exploitation) is an organization whose mission is to establish a statewide abolitionist movement in New Mexico to prevent human trafficking, protect the current victims, and prosecute the offenders. It is their goal for 2012 that New Mexico passes a statute that will promote the human trafficking hotline number in every massage parlor, spa, or hotel found as a public nuisance. Additionally, every sexually orientated business, airport, train station, bus station, highway truck stop, highway rest stop, hospital, or farm shall post the hotline in every entrance or a location that holds similar postings.

Special Agent D’Antonio encourages everyone to call the Human Trafficking National Hotline 1-888-3737-888 if you suspect any signs of human trafficking. Since December 7, 2007, only 110 New Mexicans dialed the hotline to report human trafficking, as compared to Texas 3,219, California 3,283 and 296 in Arizona.

For more information on human trafficking please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit www.releaseglobal.org for a copy of this statute and other proposed statutes.

Winter 2012