Civil rights symposium focuses on human trafficking - KansasCity.com

Civil rights symposium focuses on human trafficking - KansasCity.comCivil rights symposium focuses on human trafficking

By JOE LAMBE
The Kansas City Star
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Human trafficking — modern day slavery — is appearing more and more, and federal prosecutors on Friday called for help in attacking it.

They also announced that federal prosecutors in Kansas and western and eastern Missouri have formed teams to work together on the problem.

They and Thomas Perez, an assistant attorney general in Washington, D.C., who heads the civil rights division, called for help from local police and from private groups that work with immigrants and victims.

“We have a human trafficking epidemic in this country,” Perez said at a civil rights symposium at the Reardon Convention Center in Kansas City, Kan.

Federal prosecutors nationwide filed a record number of such cases in 2009 and broke that record with even more cases last year, he said.

The U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Missouri has filed more such cases than any other federal district, said Cynthia Cordes, an assistant federal prosecutor who spoke to the gathering.

It is not because the Kansas City area has more trafficking than anywhere else, she said, but because they formed a task force in 2006 to find and prosecute it.

“It’s everywhere,” she said, but it’s hard to find in part because victims are often afraid and uncooperative at first.

Human trafficking, whether for sex or forced labor, she said, brings in an estimated $32 billion a year worldwide and is the third most profitable form of crime, behind drugs and guns.

Her task force is comprised of federal and state law enforcement and private groups that assist victims. It first concentrates on rescuing victims, she said.

They are often illegal immigrants with limited language skills, she said, but they have also been American runaways, girls with mental disabilities, even one girl raised from age 12 to be a dominatrix.

“Victims need to be rescued,” she said, “and the prosecution of their trafficker is the single most important part of their recovery.”

One case the western district charged two years ago involved a group of Uzbek men in a sophisticated scheme in which they conspired to obtain fraudulent guest work visas. The men used fraudulently obtained guest worker visas to bring in foreign workers, house them in crowded, substandard apartments and not pay them what had been promised.

Perez said Friday that case demonstrates how deep the human trafficking problem goes nationwide and worldwide.

To reach Joe Lambe, call 816-234-7714 or send email to jlambe@kcstar.com.