413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

Brothels
Law enforcement reported that Miami brothels are primarily operated by Hispanic or Latino men and
women. Women have been found to be both voluntarily involved in prostitution and sex trafficked in
brothels, with minors also sex trafficked in brothels. Women and girls are typically from Mexico,
Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Law enforcement stated that women working in brothels are now
are working voluntarily, but had been smuggled to the United States when they were minors and then
forced into the underground commercial sex trade to pay off their smuggling debts. One law enforcement
officer reported,
What we’ve been seeing in the last one [investigation] we did is a lot of the girls were
doing it voluntarily at that point, [but] had been trafficked [smuggled and then trafficked]
in seven, eight years ago. They paid their debt off and they stayed down there. They know
how to make money now so they do it voluntarily. They’re much older now, not very
attractive, it’s kinda like this is all they got. (Miami Law Enforcement Official)
He further explained that women and girls would be recruited in and transported from Mexico,
Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador by individual families rather than large criminal networks. They are
then linked up with a coyote or smuggler who would facilitate travel across the border. It was noted that
Mexican drug cartels help facilitate the smuggling of women and children from Mexico and are highly
organized compared to the smuggling of women and children from other parts of Latin America.
Different border crossing patterns have been observed in these cases—some have gone to Cuba and others
have crossed through Texas or California. Despite the method of passage, once individuals arrive in the
United States, it is common for them to be transported to New York or New Jersey before being shipped
down to South Florida. This pattern is believed to mirror the pattern of travel for migrant farmworkers
following seasonal crop cycles, as these farmworkers are reportedly the largest client base of Latino
brothels. Prices charged are usually about $25 for 15 minutes. At one brothel, law enforcement observed
upwards of 60 to 80 daily customers.
Brothel cases with no evidence of force, fraud, or coercion to substantiate human trafficking charges are
prosecuted at the state level, rather than the federal level. In these cases, authorities use state laws on
deriving proceeds from prostitution to shut down brothel owners’ operations.
Internet
Internet-facilitated trafficking and prostitution in Miami usually takes the form of escort service
websites—as well as websites such as Craigslist, Backpage, or Eros—advertising individuals who may or
may not be controlled by a pimp. In Miami, online escort services are typically described as “high-end” in
that the prices charged are higher—$600 to $1,000 per hour—and therefore the customers tend to be
wealthier. Law enforcement noted that escort services investigations have revealed sex trafficking and
prostitution of women and girls, primarily Eastern European foreign nationals and a few US citizens.
Foreign national women in the United States on a variety of visas, such as J1 visas and H2B visas, have
been found to be sex trafficked. Law enforcement also reported that the escort services may be connected
through a transnational organized crime network. The highly organized criminal networks and limited
law enforcement resources (even of the task force), presented a challenge to dismantling these networks,
as described by a law enforcement official below:
We only just started scratching the surface. Quite honestly, I don’t know if we have the
resources to take it so far and then everybody’s going to be scrambling … Because you are
going into a different, an organized crime portion … doing more than what we do,
basically surveillance, doing undercover operations. Now you’re doing more wiretaps,
following the money, doing a money laundering case to try to tie into an organized crime.
So these cases last a lot longer in these economic times. I know our department couldn’t
do it alone. And even as a task force, it’s going to be hard for us to come up with the
resources to do something like that. (Miami Law Enforcement Official)
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