California a top destination for human traffickers

The California Alliance to Combat Trafficking and Slavery Task Force released today its Final Report. The report contains descriptions of what can only be called modern-day slavery and makes extensive recommendations for dealing with the horrors of human trafficking. The full report can be downloaded at http://safestate.org/index.cfm?navID=442.

Research by the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center identified 57 forced labor operations in involving more than 500 people from 18 countries between 1998 and 2003. The Task Force held public hearings in 2004 and 2005 on human trafficking and continued researching and hearings which led to new legislation in the California legislature and to the release of this final report. Here are some excerpts from the report involving San Francisco.

• In July 2005, the federal government arrested more than 40 people in Los Angeles and San Francisco and seized more than $3 million in illicit proceeds in Operation Gilded Cage. This operation involved more than 100 Korean women, many of whom told investigators that they were taken from their country against their will and forced to work as erotic masseuses.
• California Regional Task Forces Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice:
  In 2004 and 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice awarded grants of $450,000 to five California law enforcement agencies in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose to establish human trafficking task forces to aid in the identification and rescue of human trafficking victims and in the investigation and prosecution of traffickers. These grants require strong working relationships between law enforcement, other government entities and NGOs that provide direct services to victims of trafficking. The San Francisco Police Department, the lead agency for the North Bay Human Trafficking Task Force, is "committed to end the demand for human trafficking through investigations and strong enforcement procedures against perpetrators. The Task Force trains law enforcement and creates partnerships with federal agencies to build successful cases against traffickers, collaborates with NGOs to educate the community about human trafficking, and conducts human trafficking assessments and referrals for all potential victims encountered during code enforcement inspections and investigations. It also collaborates with the FBI Child Exploitation Unit to identify and build cases against traffickers of U.S. victims and supports the Girl’s Justice Initiative to provide education to girls at the Juvenile Justice Center."
• The Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach Immigration and Trafficking Project in San Francisco represents victims of human trafficking for immigration and other civil legal relief and provides community outreach and technical assistance and training on human trafficking to NGOs and law enforcement.
• The Standing Against Global Exploitation (SAGE) Project, also in San Francisco, is a collaboration between law enforcement, public health, social services and private agencies with the goal of bringing an end to the commercial sexual exploitation of children and adults.
• “Rescue and Restore” Campaign: In conjunction with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ “Rescue and Restore” campaign to raise public awareness about human trafficking, several coalitions have been established in California. These include coalitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento, which in July 2007, became the 18th city in the nation to form such a collaborative effort.
• In 2005, the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco passed a “Sweatfree Contracting Ordinance,” with a goal of encouraging responsible contracting and reducing any inadvertent support of contractors who use sweatshop or other forced labor.

San Francisco District Attorney Kama Harris was widely quoted in the media coverage of the release of this report. She is listed as a sponsor of new legislation in the California Legislature (Assembly Bill 1278) designed to make it easier to make cases against traffickers and put them out of business for good. In many cases California laws are even weaker than the incredibly inadequate federal anti-trafficking law. AB 1278 seeks to provide stiffer penalties and addresses pimping as a specific crime among other changes.