SALT LAKE CITY — The U.S. Attorney’s office in Utah is partnering with local law enforcement agencies along as they celebrate their Night Out Against Crime.
One particular crime federal prosecutors are really focusing on is human trafficking, calling it the modern day form of slavery; an international, multi billion dollar business for the traffickers.
Officials say it’s happening in Utah and they’re doing what they can to try and combat the problem.
Deputy US Attorney for Utah, Carlos Esqueda, has spent the past seven years focusing on human trafficking.
“We’ve had an increase in human trafficking, exponentially each year," explained Carlos Esqueda, Deputy U.S. Attorney for Utah. "Labor trafficking is the latest increase that we‘re seeing. We have a number of sex trafficking investigations ongoing.
“It’s been a priority of the justice department, they put an emphasis on it, and they are putting us to work.”
Esqueda says while it may not grab headlines like international drug trafficking and cartel violence, human trafficking is just as insidious.
“It’s very tragic! Many of our sex trafficking cases, they’re young women, they have no resources, they have no place to go," he said. "They don’t have any documents, they steal their IDs, a drivers license or a passport, they take their phones and they are caught.”
While some victims are brought to Utah by force, many are lured by the false promise of a better life, with the chance to work off their passage and to ultimately achieve the American dream. But Esqueda shared that the dream usually ends in a nightmare scenario for the victims.
“Forced to work until their debt is paid off, but of course they can’t pay off that debt, it keeps increasing. They charge them for housing, they charge for transportation, they charge them for food and other necessities," Esqueda said. "So they’re caught in this servitude and they can’t get out.”
Motivated by greed, Esqueda added that traffickers know where their markets are, in particular, booming western states like Utah.
“Utah and other western states have become a circuit, and you see people in the sex trade industry using Salt Lake City as a hub to circulate these women around the west, but we also have that for labor,” he said. “The idea is to protect, prevent and then to prosecute. So we join with the Utah Attorney General’s office, we have local law-enforcement on task forces.”
Esqueda went on to say cases are labor-intensive and time-consuming, often taking months, sometime years to prosecute. They can also be difficult to spot, but he says the U.S. Attorneys Office and the Utah Attorney General’s Office are both committed to fighting the problem.
