Santa Clara County Makes Strides Toward Combating Human Trafficking

By: Chris Vu

In the latest effort to stop sex trafficking, the Santa Clara County Law Enforcement to Investigate Human Trafficking (LEIHT) Task Force rescued five victims, arrested 16 ‘johns’ and one exploiter for human trafficking between January 26 and February 1, 2020, during Operation Reclaim and Rebuild.

The alleged exploiter, Issac Lee, was arrested for trafficking a victim from out of state and bringing her to the Bay Area for the purpose of prostitution. The victim thought Lee was going to help her get back to her family. During the investigation, two other women were identified and contacted with ties to Lee. Investigators believe the victims were targeted based on their narcotics dependency and that it was used as a method of control, according to a Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department press release. LEIHT, with assistance from their advocate partners, Community Solutions and YWCA, was able to safely return the victim back to her family.

A total of 518 arrests were made statewide during the week-long Operation Reclaim and Rebuild, which involved 70 other participating federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, and task forces from across California. The Operation’s focus ranged from sidewalk prostitution to the cyber world of trafficking. Law enforcement authorities were able to rescue 76 adults and 11 minors, with 266 male arrests for the charge of solicitation, and 27 suspected traffickers and exploiters arrested.

The Santa Clara County LEIHT Task Force was formed in 2014 to reintegrate victims of human trafficking and prosecute suspected pimps and abusers. The task force consists of investigators from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, the District Attorney’s Office and a prosecuting Deputy District Attorney. Some larger cities, like San Jose and Los Angeles, have their own task forces.

The San Jose Police Department’s (SJPD) Human Trafficking Task Force arrested four people in early January 2020 for alleged crimes related to human trafficking and rescued six survivors ranging from ages 25 to 54, according to an SJPD press release.

“The only way to fight human trafficking is to collaborate with each other,” said Detective Ana Perez, with the SJPD’s Human Trafficking Task Force. “Human trafficking is a huge problem all over the world but it is a problem close to home. It is around us more than we would like to believe.”

There’s two areas of human trafficking, explained Perez — labor and sex trafficking.

“Trafficking occurs by force, fraud, or coercion. Sex trafficking specifically occurs when a person's liberty is deprived with the intent to assist, aid, or entice that person into prostitution and the trafficker is benefiting in one way or another from the earnings (in partial or in full),” said Perez.

“For labor trafficking, the person is made to perform labor or services by force, fraud, or coercion. During an investigation, the totality of the circumstances come in play to distinguish between labor exploitation and labor trafficking. Some key factors to pay attention to in a labor trafficking case include deprivation of liberty, threats, or use of violence, intimidation and control, deception of consequences, use or threatened to use law,” she said.

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted on January 31 to create a Human Trafficking Commission, which will coordinate government and community efforts to eliminate human trafficking.

Commenting on the action, Supervisor Cindy Chavez said in a press release, “Human trafficking denies many County residents basic human dignities and strains the County's safety net by increasing the need for law enforcement to combat the issue.” Chavez further noted, "Innovative solutions and improved collaboration between governmental entities and the community are sorely needed."

Lynette Parker, an associate clinical professor at SCU Law, who is on the Executive Committee of the South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking, wants people to understand that human trafficking spans many industries.

Many times, traffickers trick victims with false promises of stable employment and good pay, when in reality they are coerced to provide commercial sex or exploitative labor, she explained. Traffickers often take most, if not all, of their wages.

“No one industry should be thought of as ‘this is where labor trafficking is.’ If there is an employer or someone in one of the industries who is willing to exploit people to use them and their services to make money off of them, it will happen,” said Parker.

The South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking (SBCEHT), which is comprised of service providers, law enforcement, and government agencies, uses a victim-centered approach to tackle trafficking in the county. In 2018, alone, the Coalition’s victim service providers, such as Asian Americans for Community Involvement, Community Solutions, and YWCA Silicon Valley provided 219 human trafficking survivors with crisis intervention services and comprehensive services. At least 76 survivors were foreign-born and 155 were born in the U.S, including commercial sex exploited children (CSEC) and at-risk CSEC.

In the same, year, county legal service agencies, such as Asian Law Alliance, Bay Area Legal Aid, Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center, Legal Advocates for Children and Youth (LACY), Step Foward Foundation and Justice at Last reported working on 203 human trafficking cases. This data may include a small number of duplicated clients who received legal services from multiple agencies in 2018.

Since 2015, there have been 47 arrests related to human trafficking in Santa Clara County, according to data compiled from Santa Clara County police departments, excluding Gilroy, which did not provide data to The Advocate. All of the reported victims were female. Statewide, 1,656 trafficking cases were reported through the National Hotline in the latest report from 2018, up from 1,336 in 2017, according to a 2019 report by SBCEHT. Of these, 1,226 related to sex trafficking, and an additional 110 related to sex and labor trafficking, representing over 80 percent of trafficking reports in the state. There were 1,315 calls from survivors or victims to the National Hotline in 2018, up from 1,057 calls in 2017.

Human traffickers are “oftentimes people that you would think can be trustworthy and they turn out not to be at all,” said Parker.

For example, in labor trafficking, it could be someone seen as a benefactor in the community who donates a lot of money to local schools and hospitals, she explained. “To the public, they are wonderful, generous people who give opportunities, but often times are exploiting the people that they are supposedly helping,” said Parker.  

As local and county officials seek to address the seemingly growing problem of human trafficking, Parker said it is important for people to report what they see if a situation does not seem right.

“We need to say something and not be quiet about it. If we don’t, then many times people who are stuck in situations don’t know how to get out of it,” Parker said.

(If you or someone you suspect is a victim of human trafficking, contact the National Hotline at 1-888-373-7888. For your safety, never do independent investigations.)

(Editor's Note: This article was originally published in the March 2020 [Volume 50, Issue 3] version of The Advocate.)