Slave Next Door (52 page)

ecuting a crime that was supposed to have ended 150 years earlier. There

was a sense of moral outrage, combined with a real desire to find and

help victims. Another reason, however, was less altruistic and reflected a

purely political agenda. The federal government found a campaign

against slavery to be more “politically attractive” than cases involving

race issues or the prosecution of police officers. According to Moskowitz,

“More and more resources were being pushed into trafficking” as the

government urged the DOJ to investigate and prosecute more trafficking

cases. “They were clearly making a choice on priorities, and there was a

lot of pressure to produce. We were accountable for results.”108

Inevitably, in the frenzy to produce results, cases of human smuggling

and visa fraud were erroneously lumped in with trafficking cases. “The

administration,” says Moskowitz, “was after numbers. Cases were

being counted very carefully. Awards and speeches were being given for

successes in trafficking prosecutions, but not in those relating to hate

crimes or police cases.”109 Results were evident in the steadily increas-

ing number of prosecutions, although when compared to the huge

number of potential cases estimated by the federal government to exist,

the successful prosecutions represented “a drop in the bucket,” accord-

ing to Moskowitz. That points up four problems.

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First, it is not the Civil Rights Division’s responsibility to actually

uncover cases; they can only act on what is brought to them by outside

organizations: government agencies, local law enforcement, and NGOs.

“Most of our cases came from escapees, and a few hot line calls—rarely

from pro-active police work. A lot of time, money, and effort were spent

pursuing cases that were initially thought to involve trafficking, but in

the end, couldn’t be established as such.”110

Second, the nature of trafficking cases requires much more time and

resources than most other types of crimes. Without cooperative victims,

says Moskowitz, it’s virtually impossible to make a trafficking case.

“Victim services are a necessary corollary to success in court. You often

don’t know you have a trafficking case until you spend a lot of time

speaking with victims who aren’t forthcoming. These are very complex

cases; they take special skills. A lot of prosecutors don’t have these skills,

and they don’t want them. They’re busy doing other things. The crime of

trafficking, as defined, requires proof of enforced labor; it’s hard to

prove, and finding and IDing victims is also turning out to be very diffi-

cult. If we could have known in advance which were the real cases—

which of course is an impossibility—it would have reflected a better

result.”111

Third, the very numbers the government has been feeding the public

over the past eight years—aside from being all but indefensible in terms

of research or degree of accuracy—have been working against any true

perspective regarding the DOJ’s actual rate of success. “The numbers

were killing us,” recalls Moskowitz. “The public was accepting them

without question. We made good efforts, but ultimately we could never

do enough cases, in the face of the numbers, to make an impact in the

eyes of the public. Trafficking is a worthy problem; but without knowing

how big the problem is, it’s hard to know what resources to focus on it

or how to make a good policy decision.”112 He anticipates that the gov-

ernment’s vacillating numbers game will eventually invite a backlash.

Resources will be withdrawn. And without consistent information or

solid data—a virtual impossibility given the hidden nature of the

crime—the public will eventually see trafficking as an empty cause and

lose patience with and interest in it.

Finally, there is a built-in mechanism for failure in the system: limited

resources. “The government is simply not capable of doing thousands

or tens of thousands of trafficking investigations. The FBI doesn’t have

the manpower, and DOJ doesn’t have the prosecutors.” The govern-

ment, Moskowitz argues, initially didn’t think that far ahead; there was

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a trafficking problem, and the Criminal Section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights

Division was assigned the vanguard position. “Little thought was given

to resources in the event that thousands of cases came in.” When this

eventually became clear, the federal government encouraged each state

to pass its own trafficking law, drawing up a model statute toward this

end, in order to take up some of the slack. Further, though the Criminal

Section was leading the charge, the administration made an effort to

involve the U.S. attorneys around the country in trafficking cases—an

effort that met with mixed success.113

Moskowitz has a difficult time understanding how HHS—an agency

by definition outside the realm of law enforcement—came to be involved

in what he refers to as “criminal investigative response.” Their method-

ology escapes him. “I’ve never seen anything like it. You had a crime, but

couldn’t find victims, so you paid people to find them! It boggles the mind.

HHS came up with this scheme to find victims, and it’s the only program

I know of where the work of finding victims is allocated to a non–law

enforcement agency. It’s strange, and dangerous. [Investigating traffick-

ing] is the job of the FBI or DOJ. The horror and validity of the crime

should not be undermined by harebrained schemes and bad numbers.”114

Moskowitz also sees as wrongheaded the pressure placed on the

NGOs by HHS’s per capita system to locate their victims. “We’ve had a

number of cases from NGOs. But it’s not their job [to go looking for

them]. We’re forcing them to ID victims without actually becoming vic-

tims; it’s inappropriate, and fraught with danger. This ought to be led by

FBI or some other law enforcement agency.” By and large, he has very

positive recollections of working with NGOs. “Our view of NGOs was

that they were often very important partners to a successful investiga-

tion and prosecution. We fostered good relations with many of them.

There were also fringe NGOs with close ties to the administration who

were hard to deal with; but the majority worked with us well, tried to

help and to not get in the way.”115

The issue that gave Moskowitz the greatest concern was the shift in

emphasis toward prostitution as a form of human trafficking. From the

beginning, he notes, “I got a strong sense that the sex cases were much

more interesting to the Bush administration.” He sees it as fallout from

the foreign-versus-domestic victim issue. “This was just starting

during my tenure. There was some media criticism of the overempha-

sis on foreign victims and all the benefits they’re entitled to, and the

administration is sensitive to criticism. It’s possible that their sensitivity

is responsible for the switch to local victims and to instances of pimps

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beating prostitutes, violations of the Mann Act, and so on, being

charged as trafficking cases. It’s kind of a creative way of looking at

them. I looked at these cases and said, ‘We’re not here in the Civil Rights

Division to drive pimp and prostitution cases.’ That’s what disturbed

me the most. They didn’t belong in the Civil Rights Division.” And if

prostitution is made a federal offense, he asks, “Where are the

resources? There aren’t enough federal prosecutors in the country to

prosecute these cases.”116

What in the system would he like to see changed?

Ideally, the DOJ should have a separate antitrafficking section consisting

of lawyers from the Criminal Division to deal with immigration fraud,

Mann Act violations, and trafficking-related prostitution; the Criminal

Section to address the crime of servitude; the Asset Forfeiture Section, to

seize criminally obtained assets and instrumentalities (cars, etc.) used to

commit the crime of trafficking; and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity

Section—CEOS—to address child-related trafficking issues. Part of the

mandate would be to bring training to U.S. attorneys in the various states

throughout the country. And a vital component would be an investigative

arm attached to the unit within the FBI or somewhere. Maybe the volume

wouldn’t be there, but I think it is. And the government could then say,

“We’re making our best efforts.” I always thought this was inevitable, but

it never happened, they never did that. Instead, they shifted the main

agenda of the Civil Rights Division from hate crimes and official miscon-

duct cases; some members of the administration saw trafficking as a con-

venient way out—leading the civil rights charge without actually doing

any civil rights cases. My question is: Should this effort have been focused

on the Criminal Section of the Department of Justice in the first place? The

priority of the Civil Rights Division needs to be civil rights. Although I was

an integral part of the effort, in retrospect I have doubts as to whether this

shift in priorities from the section’s traditional civil rights mission was the

wisest course. While the extent of the trafficking problem is unclear, there

is no doubt that there are many thousands of victims in the country—and

the world—who are experiencing the most horrendous forms of physical

and psychological abuse, day after day, month after month. These are seri-

ous crimes that need to be addressed by law enforcement, but it must be

done in the most effective way possible.117

G A U G I N G P E R F O R M A N C E

It is difficult to evaluate the federal government’s success in the traffick-

ing war. Apparently, accountability is something that the government

itself finds elusive. A report put out by the Government Accountability

Office in July 2006 states, “U.S. government-funded anti-trafficking

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projects often lack some important elements that allow projects to be

monitored, and little is known about project impact due to difficulties

in conducting evaluations.” While disagreeing that “monitoring of pro-

grams was limited,” the State Department did concede that “better

information is needed.”118

From interviews with members of both NGOs and government agen-

cies, many of whom asked to speak anonymously, there is a sense that

the quality of commitment and performance from federal agencies—

including the FBI and ICE—does not always measure up to the traffick-

ing-related policies and practices that they are responsible for

implementing. As with so many things, it all comes down to the man or

woman in the field. Some are truly exceptional. In the words of human

trafficking consultant Florrie Burke, “Both DOJ and ICE have amazing

victim witness coordinators—Sue Shriner at ICE, and Lorna Grenadier

at Justice. Both have gone on site following raids and rescues and have

had direct contact with victims to assess their needs and provide sup-

port. They’re not your armchair bureaucrats. They have also been an

incredible resource to NGOs. They know how criminal justice and

immigration systems work, and most NGOs rely on them for technical

assistance. They walk it like they talk it.”119

However, one state’s NGOs might be thrilled with the level of com-

petence and enthusiasm from an DOJ or ICE agent, while those in a

bordering state are frustrated, angered, and appalled. Same agency,

same job definition, different approach to the job. This is also true of

U.S. attorneys. Some are real ground shakers when it comes to pursuing

cases of human trafficking, while others merely go through the

motions—or not. How frustrating to rescue victims and work to pro-

vide for their care, and to devote your energies to seeing their traffickers

put away, only to run into apathy or reticence at the state’s highest judi-

cial level. It has happened.

Granted, the fight against human trafficking in the United States is

only recently begun. Nonetheless, it is essential that some viable stan-

dards of accountability be applied when it comes to monitoring our

response to this crime. There are victims of modern-day slavery

throughout America; no one denies this. Attention should be focused

on finding them and helping them, not on grandstanding, moral cru-

sades, or waving unsupportable numbers like battle flags. By quoting

unsubstantiated estimates of foreign-born victims, or American-

born children at risk annually, or women forced into prostitution,

the government is not only acting irresponsibly but doing harm in the

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long run to the public perception of trafficking. Its very nature as a

hidden crime belies the accuracy of any of the “official” numbers; but