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Philly.com - Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News
Posted Wed, May. 03, 2006 ARRESTS HIGHLIGHT SCOPE OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING The major case is the fourth in recent years in N.J., where culprits and victims blend into the ethnic mix. By Wayne Parry, Associated Press NEWARK, N.J. - From the flats of Moscow, the huts of Tegucigalpa, and the barrios of Mexico City, women and girls as young as 14 have come to New Jersey, many expecting jobs as waitresses or hostesses. What they got, prosecutors say, was virtual slavery in brothels or similar bondage in nightclubs. Refusal meant beatings - or worse. The arrest this week of 66 people in what authorities say is a ring that smuggled Mexicans into the United States, and that may have forced the women to work as prostitutes, was the fourth major human-trafficking case exposed in New Jersey in recent years. "People are willing to treat other people inhumanely with no other motive than profit," said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark. Because of their immigration status, the women are unlikely to complain to police, and the diverse ethnic makeup of North Jersey's neighborhoods makes it easy for the traffickers and their victims to blend in. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, human trafficking is a multibillion-dollar business worldwide. The agency estimates that 45,000 to 50,000 women and children are smuggled illegally into the United States each year to work as prostitutes or indentured servants. In the latest New Jersey case, Mexican brothers Jose Luis Notario Guzman, 50, and Jose Ignacio Notario Guzman, 46, were charged with operating an illegal money-transfer operation that sent the proceeds of prostitution from Newark to Mexico City using couriers. The older Guzman also was charged with conspiracy to harbor illegal aliens. The case capped a nearly two-year investigation that has roots in San Miguel Tenancingo, a Mexican city of 11,000 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say is becoming a hotbed of human trafficking. The Guzman brothers, who are being held without bail, are from the city, about 70 miles southeast of Mexico City. New Jersey state police pulled over a van and a car Sunday night carrying women who had worked in brothels in the Washington, D.C., area, leading to raids Monday morning in 15 locations in Union City, West New York and Queens, N.Y. No one has been charged with prostitution-related crimes, but immigration officials say they believe at least some of the women were forced to work in the brothels. "The problem is growing rapidly," said Walter Zalisko, a retired Jersey City police lieutenant who helped organize a conference on human trafficking in New Jersey in 1997. "There is just so much money to be made in this business. The product - women - is not illegal, like drugs or guns." Federal agents watched women going into and out of the elder Guzman's apartment with plastic supermarket bags filled with illegal abortion-inducing drugs, antibiotics and condoms. The younger brother is accused of selling the items from a drop ceiling in his West New York bodega. The elder Guzman's name also surfaced in a 2002 case in which two sisters ran a brothel in Plainfield, where teenage Mexican girls were forced to work as prostitutes. Six people pleaded guilty in that case, and the ringleaders got 17 years in prison. In a similar case making its way through the courts, the promise of restaurant jobs in America lured 19 Honduran women and girls - some as young as 14 - to an alleged smuggling ring that took them to North Jersey. They were forced to work six days a week at bars in Union City and Guttenberg to solicit male customers and encourage the men to buy them beers. The money that went to the bar helped repay their smuggling debts, prosecutors say. Like the poor women from Latin America seeking better jobs in America, young women from Russia and Eastern Europe also were victimized by human traffickers seeking bodies for the sex trade in New Jersey. In June, a Russian entertainment promoter, Lev Trakhtenberg of Brooklyn, N.Y., got five years in prison after admitting that he and his wife, who is awaiting sentencing, helped more than 25 women come illegally from Russia to the United States to perform at strip clubs.
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