Bay Area attorneys seek help, asylum for victims
By Ji Hyun Lim
AsianWeek Staff Writer
According to the United Nations’ conservative estimate, there are 4 million women who are involved in sex trafficking nationwide. And in the United States alone, the Department of State reports that a minimum of 50,000 women, children and some men are trafficked every year.
In response to these growing problems, the FBI busted a national prostitution, human trafficking and money laundering criminal enterprise this July. In this particular raid, FBI officials say that the owners of Crystal Palace Nightclub and Ok Yeo Bong bar in Sunnyvale, Calif., were involved in a sex trafficking ring where immigrant women were forced to have “dates” and sex with customers in exchange for rent, utilities and cost incurred to transport them into the U.S.
The FBI first discovered this particular operation in Tennessee, where there were hostess bars with suspicious documents, including layouts and floor plans that suggested brothel activity. After months of investigation, the FBI discovered that these bars were connected to the bars in Sunnyvale.
The nine to 12 victims of the sex trafficking in Sunnyvale, mostly Korean women, have been held in custody and may be deported by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence (NDSDV), Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, Gabriela Network and other community groups have offered to work with the INS to provide legal rights and social custody information to the Korean women victims of the Sunnyvale sex trafficking ring.
Nalini Shekar, an NDSDV social worker, points out that having access to these women has been difficult. “The government should give us the ability to work with them and give them access to provide social services and legal services,” Shekar said. “We have lawyers who can speak their language. We want to provide shelter, social services [and] legal services that they might require.”
This is not the first time the Bay Area APA community has been rocked with such a case. In 2000, a Berkeley landlord named Lakireddy Bali Reddy was accused of immigration violations and transporting girls from India for illegal sexual purposes. The case was first discovered after two teenage girls allegedly brought from India by his were overcome by carbon monoxide fumes in one of his apartments in November 1999. One of the girls, who was identified as Sita Vemireddy, 17, died. Reddy was sentenced to serve more than eight years in prison and was ordered to pay $2 million in restitution.
According to Ivy Lee, staff attorney at API Legal Outreach and co-chair of the Bay Area Anti-Trafficking Task Force (BAATT), the INS’s standard operating procedure is to detain sex workers who are not lawfully documented and place them in the Yuba County jail where there is no language accessibility for them. Meanwhile, the government initiates removal proceedings.
“With the trafficking or operations, women and children aren’t allowed to speak to anyone except the [club owners’] attorneys who tend to be in collusion with the traffickers or may be somewhat ignorant to what the trafficker does,” Lee said. “Their job is to get them bonded out and then reassert them in a criminal operation, and get them working again.”
However, Lee argues that victims of sex trafficking have rights in the United States. Victims may be eligible for T and U visas authorized by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 that are specifically tailored to provide relief to victims of sex trafficking and other criminal activity.
The interim guidance from the Department of Justice also says that prosecutors are not supposed to initiate proceedings if there are any suspicions that the women are victims of sex trafficking.
“The INS initiated removal proceedings, and the majority of the women were [let out on bail],” Lee pointed out. “They do the same thing every time. Ninety percent of the time, we see them over and over again. They will [appear] in both L.A. and N.Y. immigration court.”
There are continued efforts by community groups to set up a relationship with the INS and law enforcement to let these women know they have legal rights. Social workers and counselors request access to these women to provide their services. API Legal Outreach wants to build a cooperative relationship with law enforcement officials who will then contact them for legal services for these sex trafficking victims.
“We are worried because [the INS procedures are] very secretive,” Shekar said. “Our biggest concern is that we don’t want [these women] to be deported. In some cases when we have intervened right in the beginning and worked with the DA’s office cooperatively, it has always been more successful for both the prosecution as well as the victims.”
Lee added, “There’s a lot of public sentiment that these women came here and deserve this. The important thing for the public to start thinking about and communicating to their representatives and law enforcement [is] that these are victims of sex trafficking and indentured servitude, slavery. It’s modern-day slavery.”
Reach Ji Hyun Lim at jlim@asianweek.com.
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