More ICE SVU And FBI Fail On “Human Trafficking”

Human trafficking, e.g. the bringing to the United States of aliens for unlawful work and where the alien is held in bondage or peonage, usually in prostitution, is a myth.  It is the politically correct term to describe a non–problem and designed to avoid the real problem, which is the crime of alien smuggling.  While there are cases of aliens being held in peonage or slavery, those cases are generally committed by immigrants themselves and generally for personal service, or more commonly, household servants.  Besides being immigrants, the perpetrators are also either African, Nigerian in particular, or Arab.  High profile cases are generally Saudi or other Gulf Arabs enslaving Indonesian or other Asians.  For instance: Saudi Who ‘Kept Maid As Sex Slave’ Denied Parole In US For Refusing To Attend Sex Offender Course, By Orlando Crowcroft, IBT, May 15, 2015 and Katy Couple Charged in Bizarre Servant Slavery Case, by Leif Reigstad, Houston Press, February 19, 2016.  Note the nice variation on the immigrant criminals: Katy Couple, not Nigerian immigrants.

That be said, there is no such thing as human trafficking.  It is alien smuggling, the bringing of aliens to the United States unlawfully.  And unsurprisingly quite a few of those aliens are intending to enter into prostitution.  During the Obama Regime, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) quickly transitioned from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) component charged with investigating alien smuggling to the component of DHS in charge of welcoming “victims” of human trafficking and aiding these prostitutes to obtain legal permanent residency, e.g. green cards, in the United States instead of deporting those illegal aliens.  So much so that HSI became quickly known as ICE SVU, ICE Special Victims Unit, or just being the bitch of the NFL or Hollywood.  Sadly though, major sports events, including the Super Bowl, don’t bring out sex trafficking of either minors or aliens, much less minor aliens as your correspondent has reported.  [Dallas Police Department Schools ICE SVU Over “Sex Trafficking”, by Federale, VDare, April 28, 2014]  But it does make for politically correct headlines, directing important DHS resources away from immigration enforcement to a non-problem hyped by the Obama Regime, with little or nothing to show for their efforts.

As Super Bowl 53 [sic. LIII, author] approaches, 25 elements of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with nearly 600 personnel, have been working to support State, local, and private sector security officials ensure a safe and secure event. At the same time, the Department, through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), is on the ground in Atlanta working to combat criminal organizations’ attempts to exploit the event.

“We will not allow criminals to profit from the suffering of the most vulnerable among us,” said Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen. “Homeland Security Investigations will continue to work diligently to stop human trafficking that can surge around large events.”

ICE HSI has seen first-hand the negative impact of human trafficking following the mass movement of people in the metro Atlanta area for Super Bowl 53. This form of modern-day slavery targets and exploits millions of men, women, and children across the country every year. This week alone, ICE HSI has made 40 arrests associated with its anti-human trafficking operation and rescued four victims in the Atlanta area. DHS is committed to eradicating human trafficking and encourages all Americans to recognize the signs of trafficking and join the fight to end this heinous crime.

[DHS Combats Human Trafficking And Seizes Counterfeit Merchandise During the Super Bowl, Press Release, ICE, February 1, 2019]

And there was nothing found, merely a few teenage runaways and a couple of adults abused by their pimps.

The FBI arrested a total of 169 people during an 11-day operation targeting human traffickers who flooded Atlanta with sex workers ahead of the Super Bowl.

From Jan. 23 through Feb. 2, a coalition of federal, state, and local law enforcement busted 26 people they said were trafficking the forced sex workers. The FBI said it also arrested 34 people who tried to have sex with minors.

The FBI arrested 94 people in a similar operation in Minneapolis during last year’s game…

The FBI credited its partners in the Department of Homeland Security, Atlanta police, state of Georgia, prosecutors’ offices and anti-trafficking organizations for helping make the operation possible. Two dozen government entities and seven private ones were involved.

[FBI Arrests 169 In Super Bowl Sex Trafficking Sting, by by Anna Giaritelli, Washington Examiner, February 05, 2019]

Disappointingly though, only a few actual victims of sex trafficking were “rescued.”

“[T]he operation’s goal was to raise awareness about sex trafficking by proactively addressing that threat during the Super Bowl and events leading up to the Super Bowl,” the FBI said in a statement. “Sex trafficking is not just a problem during large scale events, it is a 365-day-a-year problem in communities all across the country.”

Nine of the victims recovered by authorities were ages 14 to 17. Nine adult victims were also rescued.

No aliens were identified, but the modus operandi of alien prostitutes smuggled into the United States is to immediately claim victim status, rather than be deported as an illegal alien prostitute.  This is because alien prostitutes have an incentive, and two visas for them as a reward for being arrested, the T and U Visas.  [Scamming for Citizenship—Investor, Crime Victim Visas Rife With Fraud, by Federale, VDare, March 14, 2015]

Here is more on the myth of sex trafficking, and consequently human trafficking.

The legend seems to have first appeared in conjunction with the 2004 Olympics in Athens. That’s telling because, though the rebranding of sex work as “sex trafficking” was already underway in prohibitionist circles in the late 1990s, the moral panic seems to have begun in earnest in January of 2004…

By the end of the year, the growing “anti-trafficking” movement was using bad stats to claim that “sex trafficking increased by 95 percent during the Olympics.” Within a few months, anti-sex worker groups made the bizarre prediction that approximately 40,000 women would be “trafficked” into Germany for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Of course, nothing of the kind happened. Despite increased police actions (including raids on 71 brothels), the German authorities only came up with five cases of exploitation they believed to be linked to the event. The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, which closely investigated the myth in its 2011 report “What’s the Cost of a Rumour?”, was unable to find a credible source for the “40,000” figure; it seems to have simply been made up. But it has doggedly persisted since then, accompanying virtually every major sporting event including the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and the 2012 Olympics in London. Despite massive police crackdowns (costing about £500,000 in London), no significant increase in prostitution (coerced or otherwise) has ever been found during these large events.

By 2008, the myth reached the United States, where it became attached to the Super Bowl (taking the place, perhaps, of the fading but equally spurious claim that domestic violence skyrockets on the day of the game). The story in Phoenix that year largely took the form of police statements that they had “received…warnings about an increase in prostitution and [were] prepared for it,” but by the following year police and other officials in Tampa had turned the rumor into a campaign…which bagged exactly one quarry, a 14-year-old pimped by two rather clueless individuals on Craigslist under the heading “Super Bowl Special” (a detail regularly repeated as part of the prohibitionist catechism since then).

The Florida Department of Children and Families supposedly “rescued” 24 other people (though this is unsubstantiated). But that number pales beside the grandiosity of the claims that “‘tens of thousands of people’—most of them young girls—[were] sold into the sex trade during Miami’s Super Bowl in 2010.” Miami was the first instance of the full-blown circus-like hype which has characterized the buildup to the game in subsequent years, where members of “anti-trafficking” groups descend in droves upon the host city to “raise awareness” and “rescue victims”.

[The Mythical Invasion of the Super Bowl Hookers, by Maggie McNeill, Reason,  January 26, 2014]

This misdirection, which reached ICE SVU management in 2009 under the Obama Regime, who quickly adopted this nonsense about sex and human trafficking to give a politically correct face to ICE SVU actions, trying to gain budget and good PR to counteract the stigma the Obama Regime put on immigration enforcement.  This PC attitude  later resulted in a mutiny by ICE SVU Special Agents-in-Charge  against immigration enforcement.  [ICE SVU Insubordinate Leadership Attacks Trump, by Federale, Federale Fifth Columnist Blog, June 29, 2018]

It is time for the Trump Adminstration and Lady DACA to end this human trafficking nonsense and redirect ICE SVU and other immigration enforcement efforts to alien smuggling and other immigration crimes, not to urban myths.