Once a slave in the US, still fighting for her freedom
María Suárez survived life as a sex slave for five years in Los Angeles. There are thousands more like her.
from the March 22, 2007 edition
Page 4 of 4
"It's very painful when you feel you are in a cage.... And so many people are still going through what I went through," she says.
Yet until she wins a pardon and gets a green card, she's still in a cage of sorts, reporting to a parole officer. "The only thing I want is for them to let me be free and to let me do something good for this country," Suárez adds.
How many slaves live in the United States? Estimates range widely.
Trafficking in persons is one of the modern forms of slavery and a crime that frequently targets teenagers and children. Since the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, the United States has committed to fighting it globally and domestically.
Some 800,000 to 900,000 people are forced across borders each year, the US State Department says, with about 17,000 trafficked intothe US from elsewhere.
As for home-grown trafficking, no one has "any hard numbers to base an estimate on," says Mark Motivans of the Department of Justice's Bureau of Statistics. The department has begun research to develop data-collection methods for victims and perpetrators.
Others organizations working on the issue suggest anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 people are now enslaved in the US. A 2004 study by Free the Slaves, in Washington, D.C., and the Human Rights Centerofthe University of California, Berkeley, said that in the US, an enslaved individual stays in slavery for three to five years. (Captivities ranged from one month to 27 years.) Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves, says a conservative estimate based on the 17,000 annual arrivals and the lower three-year figure suggests there are about 50,000 people enslaved here.
Yet that doesn't take domestic trafficking into account and is based on already freed individuals, says David Batstone, author of "Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade and How We Can Fight It."He argues for a much higher figure since freed slaves aren't likely to be representative and prosecutions in the US remain very low.
The 2004 study found that forced-labor operations had been reported in at least 90 US cities in the previous five years. California, Florida, New York, and Texas had the largest incidence of slavery.
Forced labor was most prevalent in five sectors of the US economy: prostitution and sex services (46 percent), domestic service (27percent), agriculture (10 percent); sweatshop/factory work (5 percent), and restaurant and hotel work (4 percent).
The Justice Department is trying to ramp up prosecutions. In January, it created a new human trafficking prosecution unit. Last year it obtained 98 convictions.
As states pass laws, local communities and police are also becoming more active. In Los Angeles, for the next five years, all city vehicles will carry bumper stickers calling attention to human trafficking.
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