Overview of the situation of human trafficking in the U.S. state of California
Human trafficking in California is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, and forced labor as it occurs in the state of California. Human trafficking, widely recognized as a modern-day form of slavery, includes "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power, or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs."California is particularly vulnerable because of its "proximity to international borders, number of ports and airports, significant immigrant population, and large economy that includes industries that attract forced labor." It serves both as an entry point for slaves imported from outside the US as well as a destination for slaves, with major hubs centered on Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Francisco. According to the 2011 Department of State report, California, together with New York, Texas, and Oklahoma, has the largest concentrations of survivors of human trafficking.
Overview.
Human trafficking.
Federally, human trafficking is defined as "the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery".
The state of California defines a trafficker as "anyone who deprives or violates the personal liberty of another with the intent to obtain forced labor or services, procure or sell the individual for commercial sex, or exploit the individual in an obscene matter". Specifically, depriving and/or violating someone's personal liberty entails "fraud, deceit, coercion, violence, duress, menace, or threat of unlawful injury to the victim or to another person, under circumstances where the person receiving or apprehending the threat reasonably believes that it is likely that the person making the threat would carry it out."
Sex trafficking.
Sex trafficking in California is defined as "causing, inducing, persuading, or attempting to cause, induce or persuade a minor to engage in a commercial sex act" or the "recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act."
Forced labor.
The State of California Department of Justice defines forced labor as "labor or services that are performed or provided by a person and are obtained or maintained through force, fraud, or coercion, or equivalent conduct that would reasonably overbear the will of the person."
Types of trafficking.
Labor trafficking.
Labor trafficking involves trafficking persons with the intent to use them for labor-related services.
Domestic service, agricultural work (primarily including migrants), sweatshop labor, and restaurant or hospital work comprise the most common sectors in which labor trafficking arises; domestic service is reported to harbor 27.7% of labor trafficking victims, agriculture with 10.4%, sweatshop work with 4.8%, and restaurant and hotel work with 3.8%.
Domestic servitude.
Domestic servitude involves women, men and even children who are coerced to work for and live in the homes of the employers. The employers exploit their victims by forcing them to work unreasonable hours, paying them less than minimum wages and preventing them from leaving their homes. Domestic workers could be lawfully admitted non-U.S. citizens whose passports are confiscated by their employers as a coercion tactic, U.S. citizens who are forced by their employers or families to provide money, or illegal immigrants who are forced to work un-desirable jobs. Most of domestic servitude cases still go unnoticed because of the victims' reluctance to report to the authorities.
Sex trafficking.
Sex trafficking victims in California are primarily women and children, coming from the areas of Thailand, Mexico, and Russia. In some cases, victims are born and raised in the US and coerced into sex trafficking through deceptive means. Prostitution and sex services represented the largest share of documented human trafficking activities in California (roughly 47%). As most trafficking reports only take into account media publicized cases, these percentages may be skewed. It is likely that sex trafficking is overrepresented in the media due to high public interest, compared to other types of trafficking.
On the other hand, a federally funded task force conducted a survey and instead looked at a sample of victims reported to the authorities. It found that sex trafficking represented the second largest type of human trafficking at 46%, with labor trafficking representing the largest share at 54%. The discrepancy in results between reported and documented cases could possibly be explained by the fact that sex trafficking is more familiar to authorities, and as a result has a higher chance of being investigated.
In California, much of the prostitution is run behind the guise of a legitimate business, such as a massage parlor. A recent report estimates that over 3,300 massage parlors in California are sex trafficking fronts. Specifically, the report mentioned that Los Angeles, Orange, and Santa Clara counties account for the highest number of sexually oriented massage parlors.
Child trafficking.
Child trafficking is defined as the exploitation of a minor—someone of 18 years or younger—through organized movement that leaves the child vulnerable to recruitment into trafficking cartels, illegal employment, and sexually exploitative work. The FBI has 13 full-time task forces dedicated to investigating high-profile child prostitution enterprises throughout the United States—two are in California, with one in Los Angeles and another in Orange County.
Of the 705 cases of human trafficking in California reported during 2017, 226 involved minors. This is lower than previous years which was 405 in 2016, 300 in 2015, and 296 in 2014. In Los Angeles, the average age of the first encounter with trafficking is 12–14 years and 11–13 years of age for girls and boys respectively, and they have a 7-year life expectancy after this first encounter.
Additionally, homeless youth and foster kids have an increased risk of being subjected to trafficking. For example 58% of sex trafficked girls in Los Angeles County in 2012 were foster kids. Furthermore, it has been found that 40-70% of street youth occasionally engage in prostitution to meet their basic needs.
Demographics of trafficked persons.
Most victims of human trafficking in California, whether international or domestic, either come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds or are vulnerable to the temptations of a better life and job. Victims of human trafficking may be are men, women and children born and raised in California or internationally, who are trapped in domestic servitude, forced into prostitution or forced to work on farms far from their initial homes. In schemes involving international persons, the victims are often smuggled into California and are forced into harsh, low-paying jobs, while being indebted to the smugglers for smuggling and transportation, and unreasonably high housing and living costs. The victims of international trafficking avoid reporting the traffickers in fear of exposing their illegal immigration status, language incompetency, oblivion of their own victimization, or wariness about the US judicial system. As immigration laws become more stringent and anti-immigrant antagonism increases, undocumented victims of human trafficking became more prone to coercion into undesirable jobs.
Structural causes.
The main cause of international human trafficking is the promise of a better life and job. Traffickers target individuals without families, jobs or place for shelter. The presence of major airports and intrastate major airports in California allows traffickers to transport the victims with ease, making human trafficking in California a profitable, low-risk and high-reward scheme.
Similarly, domestic traffickers look for easy and vulnerable targets, particularly young aged boys and girls in schools, foster homes, and homeless-shelters and streets, by offering them money, protection and drugs. Traffickers psychologically manipulate young people by acting as a parent or a lover, in order to gain their trust and take advantage of their make them emotional vulnerability.
National Human Trafficking Hotline statistics.
The National Human Trafficking Hotline receives calls regarding reporting of human trafficking cases or general questions. In its annual report for 2018, the National Human Trafficking Hotline claims that there were 790 cases of human trafficking in California, which is the highest among all states, with sex trafficking being the leading form of trafficking. Of sex trafficking victims in California, 76.3% were females, 3.9% were males and 26.9% were minors. Additionally, over 14,000 calls were made in 2018 regarding human trafficking and smuggling cases in California.
Regions of origin.
Latin America.
Almost one third of the 50,000 victims yearly trafficked into the United States come from Latin America, and the majority of these victims are trafficked into the US through the Mexico–United States border. The Mexico–United States border has been one of the major hubs for human trafficking due to the presence of gang networks and secret routes through the border.
Mexico.
Mexico's social instability, low average standards of living compared to the United States and proximity to the United States, makes it one of the most active hubs for human and sex trafficking into California. A conservative estimate made in 2000, claims that around 100,000 women are constantly trafficked around Latin American borders for prostitution. More recently, the U.S. Department of State estimated that there were as much as 20,000 young women and children trafficked across the Mexican border each year. It starts with Mexican drug trafficking organizations and gangs supplying local American gangs with the smuggled victims. Two of the prominent Mexican routes for human trafficking share borders with the U.S. at Baja California and Chihuahua. It is estimated that around 800,000 adults and 20,000 children are yearly victims of human trafficking in Mexico.
Mexico is an important destination to human traffickers as it serves as both a destination and origination point for trafficking men, women and children. It has also become a stopover for the transportation of victims to places such as United States, Brazil, Guatemala and El Salvador. The greatest location of human trafficking is the United States–Mexican border as it offers unemployed persons in Mexico a chance to go through to the United States, where they believe they would get a good paying job and start a new life. Mexican cartels are the main players when it comes to both seducing people into human trafficking and transporting/smuggling them into the United States. These Mexican cartels have built approximately 75 cross-border trafficking and smuggling tunnels, some of which that go into California. These tunnels have made it very easy to transport people from Mexico to California, especially because these tunnels appear to be highly technological as they are equipped with electric rails cars, lights, hydraulic doors and elevators. The well-established connection between gangs in Mexico and the United States guarantees that the victims trafficked into the United States are readily being taken by the U.S. based gangs into all sorts of jobs.
Some of the human trafficking from Mexico into California tends to happen through the so-called "San Diego trafficking corridor". Women and young girls are transported from the Mexico–California border to the northern San Diego County, where they are controlled by pimps who work alongside the traffickers. These women and young girls are placed in brothels, massage parlors and strip-clubs. Research shows that the criminal networks in San Diego control more than 50 brothels, each of which employs hundreds of Mexican girls and women over the course of the year. The trafficked underage girls are also sold to U.S. military camps, U.S. tourists and farmers, who all abuse and rape the girls as young as 9 years old . These underage girls often end up with kids of their own as their "owners"/rapists sometimes do not use sexual protection, in order to label the girls as their own property. This raises bigger health concerns as these exploited girls are at high risks of having STDs such as HIV/AIDS without being aware of the calamity of the disease.
Role of coyotes.
"Coyote" is the colloquial Mexican–Spanish used to describe the practice of trafficking people across the U.S.–Mexico border. While in the past coyotes would only smuggle persons in to the United States, recently coyotes have been forcing these smuggled persons into labor agreements upon reaching the United States. These labor agreements exploit the smuggled persons as it involves working in severe conditions for long hours in agricultural labor, forced