Young girls from West Africa were brought to the United States legally but held against their will and compelled to work long hours in East Orange, New Jersey. They were forced to do work in a salon doing braids every day and were living in poor conditions. This story was reported by By Scott Bronstein, Amber Lyon and Alexandra Poolos and published by CNN in 2010.
This is just one of the many cases of human trafficking, otherwise known as modern slavery, which is a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise that can happen anywhere, to anyone.
Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofri spoke about the business of human trafficking in New Jersey as part of Mercer’s “Spring 2018 Distinguished Lecture Series” on March 20th. Prosecutor Onofri, who has served as acting prosecutor since March 2015, has worked on several cases related to modern slavery in this area.
In 2017, 8,524 cases of human trafficking were reported by National Human Trafficking Hotline (NHTH) in the United States. 161 of those cases were from New Jersey, which is 14th in the nation for human trafficking. First place is held by California, followed by Texas.
Prosecutor Onofri went over the frequent forms of slavery and human trafficking, such as labor, where individuals are forced to work against their will and most of the time under threat of violence, domestic servitude, where the victims usually perform housekeeping tasks and/or childcare for a very low payment, and commercial sexual exploitation, where victims are forced to perform commercial sex against their will and with multiple persons.
He also mentioned how many times the victim doesn’t know that they are a victim. Often they assume that’s just the way things work, especially in cases where the victim is brought from another country into the U.S.
Human trafficking can happen anywhere. Most of the time it happens in places that we visit frequently and we never realize it. For example, Prosecutor Onofri mentioned there are kitchens in multiple restaurants that have undocumented workers who are paid around 10 or 15 cents per hour.
“Usually these workers are afraid of speaking out for fear of being turned to immigration officials,” he added.
Alejandra Fernandez, a criminal justice student at Mercer, told The VOICE, “It was very interesting to learn about something. It’s an eye-opener for me and I feel like now I am going to be more careful of who is around me.”
New Jersey is well known as the Garden State for all its farms and crops that it produces, yet many farm workers are treated as slaves, having to work very long shifts for less than the minimum salary.
According to a 2015 report from the American Immigration Council Organization, 1.3 million immigrant workers comprised the labor force in New Jersey. Roughly 45 percent are involved in the farming, fishing and forestry industry. Usually, these workers are brought from another country and have difficulty speaking or understanding English, leaving them voiceless and unable to report or claim what the fair regulations should be.
However, many cases of human trafficking also apply to US citizens who are “chosen” to be part of these crimes. A documentary by CNN entitled “Chosen” explains how this happens to young, smart and regular girls who ended up getting sexually exploited.
These are students who most of the time fall for an older guy or the person known as the “pimp” who later becomes their boyfriend and starts getting them expensive gifts or taking them places to make them feel happy and special. This is to create a dependency on this person.
The pimps usually try to isolate the girls from their families and/or friends. As a result of the isolation, the girls will depend only on the pimps, and they end up being forced to do sexual things against their will, not only with the pimps but with multiple men.
Prosecutor Onofri told lecture attendees that most of the time these types of cases are brought to light because other citizens contact the police when they see something weird going on. In 2017, 8,524 cases of human trafficking were reported. About 71 percent of cases became known due to local citizens tipping off the police, according to an NHTH report from 2017.
Nairuby Garay, a criminal justice major who attended the Mercer lecture, said, “It’s impactful to believe that this can happen in the state of New Jersey. We actually need to open our eyes and be aware of the people who are around us.”
