Slaves Among Us

Slavery is the fastest-growing crime in the world, second only to drug trafficking, and it's happening right here in Southwest Florida. A few years ago, as chief assistant U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida, I helped prosecute the first case in our office in Fort Myers.

Let's take a look at two cases our office has prosecuted. In the first, a deputy was called to a migrant camp, where two men were attacking a third man. It could have been treated as an ordinary battery arrest.

But one of the attackers kept shouting, "I own you! You owe me $5,000!" That got the deputy's attention. How, he wondered, could someone in a migrant camp run up such a big debt?

In the ensuing case, United States v. Abel Cuello, Herman Covanubias and Basilio Cuello, authorities learned that the man under attack had escaped from a labor camp where 29 people had been held against their will and put to work in the fields of Collier County. They lived in a vermin-infested trailer, their paychecks going to their captors to pay off an exorbitant "coyote fee" for transporting them from Mexico to Southwest Florida.

When the victims left Mexico, they thought they were going to find work in America and send money home to their families. Instead, they were sold to the defendants for $5,000 apiece by the smuggler, a man called El Chacal (The Jackal), and forced to work until that $5,000 was paid back. But the debt never seemed

to decrease. Their captors demanded money for rent, for food, even for transportation to the fields.

The enslaved Immokalee workers had illegally entered the United States at the Arizona border. There, they were confined in a van and driven by El Chacal to Immokalee. He told them they would each be charged $700 for the trip to Florida; they could pay that back once they began to work. During the three-day trip, they had to lie on the floor of the van and were forbidden to look out the windows. They were not fed; each got one can of soda to drink for the duration of the trip.

They were delivered to Abel Cuello and the other two defendants, who served as enforcers for Cuello's labor camp. In the camp, rumors of beatings and disappearances of anyone who tried to escape were rampant. Slavery work camps don't need barbed wire, metal fences and locks-fear and intimidation keep most slaves under control. The workers are here illegally; who would miss them, and who would contact the police if they disappeared?

That's why partnerships between law enforcement and community organizations are essential. Victims might trust someone of their own heritage enough to tell them their terrible story. The Immokalee Coalition of Farmworkers assisted us in the successful prosecution of the Cuello case, even finding witnesses and persuading them to talk to us. And community agencies also help house and feed the victims once they are freed and explain what's happening as their case progresses.

Such agencies were critical in the successful prosecution of another local case, United States v. Jose Tecum. Police arrived at the home of Jose and Maria Tecum after neighbors reported

the two were fighting violently. The couple tried to get the police to leave, but the deputies discovered a young Guatemalan woman in the house, huddled on a bare mattress on the floor. A victim's advocate interviewed the young woman. The advocate, who spoke the victim's language, was empathetic but persistent, and finally the young woman began to tell her story-a horror story.

She described how Jose Tecum had kidnapped her from her isolated,

dirt-floored home in Guatemala, raped her and smuggled her into the United States. He brought her to Florida and made her work as a sexual and domestic slave and also in the fields. Tecum had gone one step further than other slavers, as well: In a primitive ritual, he had sliced off a lock of her hair and told her he now owned her soul. The lock of hair was still in his pocket when he was arrested.

Community organizations and victims' advocates assisted in bringing Jose Tecum to justice. They understood the victim's background and managed to draw from her the details that led to a successful prosecution.

In May 2003, the United Nations reported that the United States, Germany and Italy are the top three countries to which people are brought as slaves, usually illegally and by their own countrymen.

The jury found Tecum guilty on six felony counts. He was sentenced to nine years in prison, the maximum under federal sentencing guidelines. The victim received one of the first T-visas from the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. This special visa, which allows victims of trafficking to stay in the United States after their case has been prosecuted, is part of the effort to combat this crime. We hope slaves will come forward and reveal their abusers if the fear of deportation is removed.

In the past year, authorities learned about an alleged prostitution ring centered in Naples. Illegal alien women were being driven around in a gold Honda Accord and a white Dodge Caravan in a kind of mobile brothel. The women served as many as 20 to 30 different men a night. One woman told investigators she had entered the country hoping to find restaurant work. But once she had crossed the border, her smuggler beat her and forced her into prostitution. She said the women were warned that if they refused, or informed their families back in Mexico, they would be beaten or their families would be harmed.

Just a few months ago, law enforcement agencies received reports of girls 14 and 15 years old who had also been smuggled into the United States and forced into prostitution, moved from city to city between Southwest Florida and Orlando every few weeks to avoid detection. In another case, slavers approached young people in their native villages and painted a glowing picture of life in the United States. Their families would urge them to go; soon the victims found themselves picking tomatoes in the fields of Florida, forbidden to contact their family until their ever-escalating debt could be paid off.

In one case reported by a concerned priest, a young man's arm was broken when he complained. In another case, an uncle sold his niece; a neighbor believed something was wrong and complained to a victim advocacy group.

In an affluent gated community in Naples, a wealthy South American family was keeping a young girl to do all their cleaning, cooking and child care. They had persuaded her to come to this country by promising education and a better life. Instead, she was imprisoned in their home, her passport and papers confiscated, allowed out only to go to church under the watchful eyes of her captors. The minister realized he only saw the girl once a week, unlike the rest of the family, and that she never spoke. It struck him that something was wrong, and he called the sheriff.

The cases we know about are only a fraction of the story. It's going to take all of us-officials, churches, community groups and neighbors-to attack this exploding global crime and rescue those who are silently suffering in bondage and terror in our midst.

Fort Myers' Douglas Molloy has been chief assistant U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida for 13 years.