Slavery Happens Here

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Slavery Happens Here
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in December 1865, prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. But nearly 150 years later, cases involving bonded labor, human trafficking, sexual slavery and other forms of forced labor are popping up in increasing numbers. David Batstone, president of the Not for Sale Campaign, estimates that the number of slaves in the United States may be as high as 200,000, encompassing both forced labor and forced commercial sex.

Most of the victims are from outside the country, and their foreign status leaves them vulnerable to coercion. Smugglers, pimps and racketeers terrify victims with threats of arrest and deportation.

Here are some recent cases of human trafficking in the United States:

• In 1985, two married doctors in Milwaukee brought a 19-year-old domestic servant from the Philippines. For 19 years, the woman worked 16-hour days, seven days a week, earning $4 a day. Police acted on a tip and freed her in 2004. The doctors were convicted. Both are serving six years in prison.
• In 2008, hundreds of guestworkers from India, lured by false promises of permanent U.S. residency, paid tens of thousands of dollars each to obtain temporary jobs at Gulf Coast shipyards only to find themselves forced into involuntary servitude and living in overcrowded, guarded labor camps. The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a class action lawsuit on the guestworkers’ behalf. The case remains active.
• In June 2010, the Philadelphia office of the FBI cracked a human-trafficking operation run by a band of four Ukrainian brothers. The brothers lured workers to the United States with the promise of cleaning jobs, but they forced their recruits to work for little or no pay. To maintain obedience, they threatened violence against the workers’ families back in Ukraine and against the workers themselves.

In the last decade, state and federal law enforcement agencies haved dedicated more energy to investigating and shutting down human-trafficking rings in the United States. Unfortunately, their caseloads continue to grow.