Slavery in Virginia may be taking a new form — that of human trafficking.
Some 18,000 people, mostly foreign born women, are victim of the practice in the U.S. each year, according to the U.S. State Department. And while local data is hard to find, there is evidence that Virginia is becoming a haven for the trade of tricking or forcing people to come to the U.S. and having them work in servitude or prostitution.
The situation is exacerbated because Maryland and the District of Columbia have cracked down, forcing the trade south of the Potomac, according to U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf, a Northern Virginia Republican who is calling for a task force to deal with it. He met with State Police, members of the state attorney general’s office, the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to focus on the problem in late April.
Wolf points out that trafficking can involve native-born Americans such as teen aged girls who runaway from home and end up in a prostitution ring. Most of the time it involves Latino women from Central American who respond to ads offering immigration papers and money in exchange for work at “erotic” clubs. Sometimes they involve Asians, such as a group from South Korea that flew to the U.S. with phony papers and worked up and down the East Coast in massage parlors.
Working with Kimberly Mehlman, a doctoral student in criminology at George Mason University, I tracked down some of the ads. Kim had come up with ads on the Web looking for women from Guatemala, Honduras and other Central Americans to work at “men’s” clubs in South Richmond. The ads promised money, legal immigration help and “NO JOKES!” We traced the address listed in the ad to a tiny, white-washed, cinderblock house in a lower income residential neighborhood. Kim asked a Spanish-speaking woman to call the number listed, but they were disconnected. When Kim called the Richmond police, they took little interest.
Neither does Chesterfield County or the State Police, which told me that they don’t track trafficking.
That’s odd because Maryland and D.C. do. The legislature in Annapolis just passed laws toughening penalties and requiring hotels where prostitution occurs to post hotline numbers. D.C. has a task force as does the Montgomery County Police Department.
Wolf wants to raise awareness of the problem with a task force that he helped create a few years ago to weed out organized youth gangs in Northern Virginia.
Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli’s office say they are on board with Wolf. But somehow, the “Cooch” seems behind the curve on this one.
Too bad, it seems like such a natural for him — law enforcement, immigration, morality, sex. I guess he’s too busy chasing down Dr. Mann’s research, covering up the state seal’s exposed nipple or keeping public universities safe from homosexuals.
Peter Galuszka
