When it comes to the wall in particular, and immigration reform in general, I am in an unenviable position. I am a Christian Preacher. I am a Patriotic American. I have served as a Police Chief, a Police Officer, and a Patrol Officer. I have seen all sides of the issue first hand.
I know a family well whose parents brought them here as very small children, undocumented from Mexico. They raised 3 fine young men. I would be honored to have either of the 3 in my family. These 3 young men now have legal status, but for years they lived in fear of being deported. As members of the Church they attended, as compassionate Christians, as friends we shared their fear.
Having been in Law Enforcement, I have also dealt with the issue of less desirable undocumented, illegal immigration. Even though many liberals like to deny it, this is a very real issue. Most who come here are good people just trying to improve their quality of life, and provide a better life for their children than they had. Isn't that what every good parent wants? Some however, are simply criminals, gang members, etc.
Immigration reform is needed in our country. It shouldn't be a Republican issue, nor a Democratic issue. It is an American issue, and yes a Christian issue. It should be dealt with in a bipartisan fashion. Take out all the rhetoric, all the talking points and fix it. That is why we send representatives to Washington. To keep us safe and solve major problems. That is an article for another day however, back to the wall.
For my Conservative friends and readers sorry if I offended you in the first couple of paragraphs, I have to write what God puts on my heart. For my liberal friends and readers, please read the entire article before you start sending hate mail.
I don't understand how liberals can be so vehemently opposed to the wall. If they truly cared about the undocumented or illegals depending on which side of the political spectrum you are on, they would want the wall. A Christian should want the wall. It is the Christian thing, and the humane thing to do.
Because of my illness I have a lot of time on my hands. I spend much of it watching documentaries, reading, and studying. One of the books I have been researching for the past year and a half is about the drug cartels. In doing that research I have seen just how involved they are in both human trafficking and human smuggling.
Those who think the wall is racist, bigoted, etc. need only look at the terrible things that happen to these migrants due to the elements, the drug cartels, coyotes, crooked Mexican Law Enforcement, etc., it is absolutely appalling.
As many as 80% of the women and young girls are raped. Some are sold into sex slavery once they arrive in the U.S. Many migrants lie in unmarked graves in the desert. Anthropologists discover unmarked graves on a regular basis. Some headless bodies, some simply heads buried. Some appear to have been tortured first.
Many are brought into our country and placed in so called "safe houses" where they are often held hostage until their families can come up with even more money to pay the cartels. While being held they are often beat or sexually abused on video. The video is then sent to a family member to extort money from them. If they can't or don't pay, the migrant is either killed or sold into slavery.
Refusal to secure the border allows these atrocities to continue. Securing the border and enforcing immigration laws will dramatically reduce the number of migrants who attempt to cross the border. It will reduce violence on both sides of the border. Significantly reduce income for the drug cartels. It is the humane thing to do for the migrants and their families.
Some statistics for the liberals to back my statement. I am going to use as many liberal sources for the statistics more believable for my liberal readers.
From The Huffington Post:
As the number of Central American women and girls crossing into the U.S. continues to spike, so is the staggering amount of sexual violence waged against these migrants who are in search of a better life.
According to a stunning Fusion investigation, 80 percent of women and girls crossing into the U.S. by way of Mexico are raped during their journey. That’s up from a previous estimate of 60 percent, according to an Amnesty International report.
This year alone, immigration authorities expect more than 70,000 unaccompanied minors to come through the United States unlawfully, the majority of whom are from Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The number of unaccompanied Central American girls caught at the Southwest border has rapidly outpaced the number boys, according to a July Pew Research study.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/central-america-migrants-rape_n_5806972.html
More than 6,000 immigrants have died crossing the southern border since 1998, according to federal records, and hundreds of them have never been identified.
Typically when someone is missing in the United States, family members file a police report, an investigation ensues, and then, as hope fades, relatives provide DNA samples in case an unidentified body is found.
But the families of immigrants who go missing along the border — likely victims of exposure or dehydration — are largely shut out of this system. Because no one really knows precisely where they disappeared, there is no straightforward way for family members to file an official missing person report or to deposit a DNA profile in the FBI’s national database to match to the bodies found along the border.
Police often refuse to take missing person reports. Border Patrol and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said they do not investigate such cases.
And many families of the missing have no idea where to file reports anyway, or they fear getting deported if they contact police.
As a result, hundreds of unknown bodies — including children — have been buried in Arizona and Texas, where the largest numbers of deaths are recorded.
In recent years, the deaths have soared in one of the worst places for immigrants to die: Brooks County, Texas, a vast, sun-baked expanse of cattle ranches an hour north of the border on the way to Houston, a hub where immigrants can catch a ride to anywhere in the United States. The path through Brooks County is one of the routes officials say is commonly traveled by thousands of immigrants from Central America. Santos, who crossed the border near McAllen, Texas, may well have been among them.
Brooks County doesn’t have its own medical examiner. Until last year, only an elected justice of the peace declared people dead, then turned them over to funeral homes without taking a DNA sample as required by state law, partly because the county could not afford it. The funeral homes buried the dead in Sacred Heart Cemetery in the county’s only city, Falfurrias.
In 2012, the number of bodies found in the brush or on roadsides in Brooks County doubled to 129, and more than half were unidentified. The next year, according to the sheriff’s department, officials discovered 87 bodies, and 44 percent were unidentified. So far this year, they have found 43 bodies.
Last August, Brooks County started sending unidentified bodies to a medical examiner in another county for autopsies and DNA samples. But the only people trying to identify the bodies buried in Sacred Heart, with the county’s permission, are about three dozen college students from Baylor University and the University of Indianapolis and their teachers. They are forensics specialists who say the dead should be identified, just as nations are expected to identify soldiers who die during wars.
In Falfurrias, unidentified bodies are scattered throughout Sacred Heart Cemetery, but in one particular section last month, the students found corpses stuffed into body bags, rolled in blankets, or even placed in garbage bags.
Baylor anthropology professor Lori Baker said one was in a plastic funeral home bag that said “dignity,” and another bag held three skulls. As many as five bodies were dumped in a single grave.
Baker called the scenes “horrific” and said federal officials should have helped local governments address this problem years ago as illegal immigration surged.
“It’s a total systems failure,” Baker said. “It’s a job that a medical examiner ought to do, but these counties really can’t afford to do it.”
Please go to the Boston Globe and read the rest. It is heartbreaking:
The large and persistent influx of illegal aliens contributes to an environment of vulnerability and abuse. Wherever the law fails to hold people accountable, crime will flourish. The federal government’s failure to effectively address the illegal alien dilemma creates and perpetuates an environment in which exploitation runs rampant.
It is estimated that 17,000 to 19,0001 foreign nationals are trafficked into the United States each year. Trafficking is the recruitment and possible transport of persons within or across boundaries by force, fraud, or deception for the purpose of exploiting them economically. Victims are lured with false promises of good jobs and better lives, and then forced to work under brutal and inhuman conditions. Victims of trafficking are exploited for purposes of commercial sex, including prostitution, stripping, pornography live-sex shows and other acts. However, trafficking also takes place as labor exploitation, including domestic servitude, sweatshop factories, agricultural work and more. After drug dealing, human trafficking is tied with the illegal arms industry as the second largest criminal industry in the world today, and it is the fastest growing.
While anyone can become a victim of trafficking, illegal aliens are highly vulnerable to being trafficked due to a combination of factors, including lack of legal status and protections, limited language skills and employment options, poverty and immigration-related debts, and social isolation. They are often victimized by traffickers from a similar ethnic or national background, on whom they may be dependent for employment or support in the foreign country.
The information below, taken from news and government sources, demonstrates the prevalence of human trafficking in the United States and the precarious nature many illegal aliens face. American immigrants seek opportunities far better than these nightmares, but often fall victim to a flawed immigration enforcement system. Human trafficking violates the promise that every person in the United States is guaranteed basic human rights. A critical strategy in ending human trafficking is better enforcement of our immigration laws and improved federal-local cooperation in law enforcement.
Examples of Human Trafficking in the United States
- June 2016 — Aroldo Castillo- Serrano was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for his part in smuggling Guatemalan workers, including minors, and making them work 12 hour days. They were forced to live in cramped conditions and were made to pay off a significant debt incurred by Castillo-Serrano. Ana Angelica Pedro Juan was also sentenced to 10 years in prison for her part in the operation.
- January 2015 — Rafael Alberto Cardena-Sosa was sentenced to serve 15 years in prison for participating in a family run sex trafficking organization. His family member, Carmen Cadena, pleaded guilty and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The two family members are responsible for luring young women and girls from Mexico and illegally smuggling them into the United States. They then imposed a smuggling debt and forced them into prostitution with physical force and death threats.
- January 2015—Three brothers, Jorge, Ricardo and Leonel Estrada-Tepal pled guilty to sex trafficking charges. The Mexican nationals illegally transported females from Mexico to the United States and forced them to work as prostitutes in various cities. They face sentences ranging from a minimum of ten years behind bars to a maximum of life in prison.
- September 2014—Charles Marquez was sentenced to life in federal prison for recruiting women in Mexico by placing an advertisement in Ciudad Juarez offering jobs in the United States. Once recruited, he harbored them in motels and forced them into prostitution. He worked with Martha Jimenez Sanchez who faces up to ten years in prison after pleading guilty. Sanchez was released on bond and is awaiting sentencing.
- May 2013 — German Rolando Vicente-Sapon, an illegal alien, was sentenced to more than 15 years in federal prison for illegally smuggling and trafficking a 14 year old Guatemalan girl to Chattanooga, TN for $2,000 and coercing her into having sex. He will be deported after completing his prison sentence.
- March 2013 — Susan Lee Gross was sentenced to 30 months in prison for her role in using a massage parlor as a front for a prostitution house. She transported women to work as prostitutes at her parlor and laundered the proceeds. Gross made them travel to various places around the United States. The women were originally from Korea and some were unlawfully present in the United States. Most lacked language and employment skills.
- March 2013 — Moonseop Kim, who was illegally in the country, pleaded guilty to illegally transporting women from South Korea into Mississippi for financial gain with a sex trafficking organization. He posted an internet ad offering Korean female escort services. He is facing a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison as well as a deportation following the completion of his prison term.
- July 2012 — Omelyan Botsvynyuk and Stepan Botsvynyuk were convicted of recruiting workers from Ukraine and forcing them to work through physical violence and threats of sexual assault. The victims never received compensation, but were rather instructed to work until their debts, ranging from $10,000 to $50,000, were paid off. They told victims that their families would be kidnapped and forced into prostitution if anyone attempted to escape. The two brothers were found guilty and received sentences of life plus 20 years in prison and 20 years.
- October 2011 — Edk Kenit and Choimina Lukas pleaded guilty to document servitude and labor trafficking. The Micronesian couple recruited the victim from their home country to become their domestic servant. When she arrived, the couple took her passport in order to compel the victim to work for them. The couple prevented the victim from having friends, going out of the house or participating in social gatherings.
- January 2011 — Lucinda Lyons Shackleford was indicted on charges of forced labor and document servitude (The withholding of an individual’s legal documents). He promised to take care of the victim after placement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Family Reunification Program, but instead forced him to engage in various types of labor. Shackleford failed to provide him with adequate food or any form of payment for his labor.
Endnotes
- Shandra Woworuntu, “My life as a sex-trafficking victim,” BBC News, March, 2016, ; Trafficking in Persons Report, 2007, U.S. Department of State.
Link to Source:
From ICE during the middle of the liberal Obama years:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the largest investigative agency within the Department of Homeland Security, enforces a wide range of crimes related to border security, including investigations of human smuggling and human trafficking. In fact, ICE is one of the primary federal agencies responsible for combating human trafficking.
According to the U.S. Department of State, the United States is a destination country for thousands of men, women, and children trafficked from all areas of the world. These victims are trafficked for the purposes of sexual and labor exploitation. Many of these victims are lured from their homes with false promises of well-paying jobs; instead, they are forced or coerced into prostitution, domestic servitude, farm or factory labor or other types of forced labor.
Victims often find themselves in a foreign country and cannot speak the language. Traffickers frequently take away the victims' travel and identity documents, telling them that if they attempt to escape, the victims or their families back home will be harmed, or the victims' families will assume the debt. We recognize that men, women and children that are encountered in brothels, sweat shops, massage parlors, agricultural fields and other labor markets may be forced or coerced into those situations and potentially are trafficking victims.
Trafficking vs. Smuggling
Trafficking vs. Smuggling: What's the Difference?
Human trafficking and human smuggling are distinct criminal activities, and the terms are not interchangeable. Human trafficking centers on
exploitation and is generally defined as:
- Sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; or
- Recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery.
Human smuggling centers on
transportation and is generally defined as:
- Importation of people into the United States involving deliberate evasion of immigration laws. This offense includes bringing illegal aliens into the country, as well as the unlawful transportation and harboring of aliens already in the United States.
Human Trafficking Indicators
Human trafficking indicators include:
- Does the victim possess identification and travel documents? If not, who has control of these documents?
- Did the victim travel to a destination country for a specific job or purpose and is victim engaged in different employment than expected?
- Is victim forced to perform sexual acts as part of employment?
- Is the victim a juvenile engaged in commercial sex?
- Does the victim owe money to an employer or does the employer hold wages?
- Did the employer instruct the victim on what to say to law enforcement or immigration officials?
- Can the victim freely leave employment or the situation?
- Are there guards at work/harboring site or video cameras to monitor and ensure no one escapes?
- Does the victim have freedom of movement? Can they freely contact family and friends? Can they socialize or attend religious services?
ICE's Role in Combating Smuggling and Trafficking
ICE works with its law enforcement partners to dismantle the global criminal infrastructure engaged in human smuggling and human trafficking. ICE accomplishes this mission by making full use of its authorities and expertise, stripping away assets and profit incentive, collaborating with U.S. and foreign partners to attack networks worldwide and working in partnership with nongovernmental organizations to identify, rescue and provide assistance to trafficking victims.
Victim-Centered Approach
ICE recognizes that in order to successfully investigate and prosecute traffickers, victims must be stable and free from fear and intimidation to be effective witnesses. Equal value is placed on the identification and rescue of victims and the prosecution of traffickers. ICE has more than 350 collateral duty victim/witness coordinators who work with NGOs to assist in the provision of victim services. Short-term immigration relief is provided to certified victims of trafficking in the form of continued presence status.
Recent Anti-Human Trafficking Successes
Trafficker Arrested in Cameroon
In Baltimore, a 10-year-old girl from Cameroon was brought to the United States for the purpose of domestic servitude and subjected to physical abuse and isolation. The trafficker fled the United States and was later arrested in Cameroon. The trafficker was brought back to the United States to serve a 17-year sentence for involuntary servitude and harboring for financial gain. The trafficker was ordered to pay $100,000 in restitution to the victim.
Sex Traffickers Sentenced to 40 years
In Los Angeles, 15 women and girls were forced by a family-run human trafficking organization into prostitution. As a result of the investigation, seven Guatemalan and two Mexican nationals were found guilty of conspiracy, sex trafficking of children by force and importation and harboring of illegal aliens for purposes of prostitution. They received prison sentences ranging from two to 40 years depending on their level of involvement.
Traffickers Arrested in Hair Braiding Salon
In Newark, 20 young women and girls from Togo and Ghana were brought to the United States through a visa scheme, forced to work in hair braiding salons under appalling conditions, and subjected to physical abuse and threats. Six traffickers from Togo entered guilty pleas or were convicted by a jury for offenses involving forced labor, conspiracy, document servitude, visa fraud, transportation of a minor across state lines to engage in criminal sexual activity and alien smuggling.
Cooperation with Mexican Law Enforcement Rescues 24 Victims
In New York, an ICE-led investigation, in collaboration with the Government of Mexico, targeted a trafficking organization that smuggled Mexican women into the United States and then subjected them to commercial sexual exploitation. Twenty-four women were forced into prostitution at brothels on the East Coast through threats of violence against them and their children. The principal traffickers were sentenced to terms of imprisonment from 25 to 50 years each. The mother of the main defendants was arrested in Mexico and later extradited to the United States where she was sentenced to 10 years in prison for her involvement in the scheme.
Russian, Ukrainian and Czech Labor Trafficking Victims Rescued in Detroit
In Detroit, a concerned citizen reported women being forced to work against their will as exotic dancers. Ten women were brought to the United States through a visa fraud scheme where they were forced to work as dancers through threats of violence, sexual abuse and threats of jail and deportation. The investigation resulted in the arrest and indictment of nine defendants. All of the defendants pleaded guilty and their sentences ranged from probation to 14 years imprisonment.
Domestic Servitude Victim Rescued on Long Island
On New York's Long Island, ICE agents arrested a husband and wife as a result of a domestic servitude investigation. The couple was alleged to have held two Indonesian females in their residence where they were forced to perform domestic services. They were found guilty by a jury of forced labor, peonage, document servitude, harboring aliens and conspiracy. The wife was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment and her husband was sentenced to three years. The jury ordered that their residence, valued at $1.5 million, be criminally forfeited in order to assist with victim restitution
https://www.ice.gov/factsheets/human-trafficking
From NPR:
For many migrants trying to reach the U.S. from Mexico, the border region is a terrifying, lawless place, and their fear is often justified. Things are so bad in Matamoros, a border city just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, that last month the city's police were stripped of their weapons, ordered off the streets and replaced by soldiers.
Gang members openly sell pirated gasoline that they've stolen from government pipelines, and lookouts for the drug cartels monitor the south bank of the Rio Grande to make sure no one tries to swim across who hasn't paid for the privilege.
While the overall number of migrants trying to cross illegally into the U.S. has dropped dramatically over the past few years, the trip has grown more dangerous, as some of Mexico's most brutal drug cartels now earn millions of dollars each year from the extortion and smuggling of migrants.
Last year, hundreds of migrants went missing or were killed in Mexico, and more than 20,000 were kidnapped.
Extortion And Kidnapping At The Border
Juan Perez, 24, and his girlfriend arrived in Matamoros a couple of days ago from the southern Mexican state of Tabasco. They've run out of money and now find themselves stuck at the border.
"There's a lot of criminals at the river. You have to pay to cross the river," Perez says. "And on the other side you have to be careful of the Border Patrol. And there's a lot of crime here in Matamoros right now."
He says the gangs want $100 per person just to let migrants swim across the river; it's $3,000 if you want to get delivered to Dallas. Perez can't even afford to jump into the water.
The couple is staying at a church-run shelter. They've heard about other migrants getting kidnapped, robbed and beaten here. They don't have the bus fare to return to Tabasco, but Perez worries he'll get abducted if he goes out to try to find a job.
"The truth is ... I'm afraid to go out in the streets," he says.
Perez says they wanted to go to the U.S. to look for work. Now they just want to go home.
Catholic priest Francisco Gallardo Lopez runs the shelter where Perez and his girlfriend are staying. At his office attached to a simple white church, Gallardo says the situation for migrants has deteriorated significantly over the past few years.
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/08/137647286/brutal-cartels-make-crossing-u-s-border-even-riskier
The statistics quoted in the above articles are really only the tip of the iceberg. No one really knows just how many migrants have died or been killed in the desert and mountains on either side of the border and just left in shallow graves.
No one knows for sure how many young children have been sexually assaulted or forced into sex slavery. How many have been beat, tortured, or kidnapped. The area is to vast and secluded to ever know the true numbers.
The only way to stop or slow this carnage is to secure the border so well most people will stop trying. Make the criminal penalties so hard on the Coyotes and Drug Cartels for human smuggling and human trafficking that it just isn't worth the risk.
All the liberals who are opposing the wall because they care so much for migrants. Or oppose enforcing the border because they care so much for migrants are really only siding with the cartels and smugglers and placing migrants in more and more danger.
Liberals have to understand the border will have to be secured before much needed Immigration Reform will ever become a reality. Conservatives will not fall for your tricks again. If you won't seal the border for the safety of American Citizens, do it for the migrants.
