Trafficking rare but worrisome in New England (Middletown Press)

Trafficking rare but worrisome in New England

Published: Monday, April 25, 2011

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Human trafficking charges, like those brought against a military officer from the United Arab Emirates in Rhode Island earlier this month, are rare in New England, but reflect a growing problem across the nation and the globe, a senior federal official in the region said.

"In New England, we don't see a lot of it. I've been here since 2006, and I've had maybe four or five cases in that time, from forced labor to girls trafficked for prostitution purposes," Bruce M. Foucart, a special agent in charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New England, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Col. Arif Mohamed Saeed Mohamed Al-Ali, an Emirati naval officer, was arrested in Rhode Island on April 5 following a monthslong ICE investigation. He has pleaded not guilty to allegations he failed to pay a woman from the Philippines he brought to the U.S. in July to help take care of his five children while he spent a year studying at the U.S. Naval War College, a Navy-run graduate school in Newport, R.I.

Prosecutors say he confiscated the woman's passport, forced her to work seven days a week — often until midnight — and kept her largely confined to the large Colonial house he rents in central Rhode Island. The woman escaped in October and is now in hiding.

Al-Ali is charged with committing fraud in foreign labor contracting, a crime under a 2008 federal human trafficking law.

Even though cases like Al-Ali's are rare in Rhode Island and neighboring states, they're growing more common nationwide. In 2010, Foucart said, ICE initiated 651 human trafficking investigations. That's up from 432 investigation in 2008 and 299 in 2006. The 2010 investigations led to 300 arrests on trafficking violations in the U.S., Foucart said, a more than 50 percent jump from 2008.

And those figures tell only part of a larger story. ICE is the lead federal agency in charge of investigating human trafficking, but the FBI, as well as state and local law enforcement agencies, also investigate and prosecute suspected trafficking violations.

In the decade since passage of the landmark federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, law enforcement agencies have ramped up their efforts to fight human trafficking. An increase in the act of trafficking itself is difficult to quantify, but Foucart said the consensus is that it's a growing problem.

Foucart declined to discuss Al-Ali's case specifically, which took an unusual turn two weeks ago when ICE and other federal agents pulled the colonel off a nonstop flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport bound for Dubai. But he said labor violations like that alleged in Al-Ali's case can be traced to conventions in the home countries of suspects.

"It's not uncommon for people from certain countries to bring in what are essentially servants, and they're not free to leave. They're held in a peonage-type environment. That's not going to be tolerated in the U.S.," he said.

In September 2006, Hana Al-Jader, a Saudi Arabian princess living in Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to visa fraud and harboring an alien after prosecutors accused her of forcing two Indonesian women to work as her domestic servants.

Despite the relative paucity of cases in New England, human trafficking is a priority of ICE offices in the region, Foucart said.

"I have agents who are dedicated to human trafficking cases only," he said. "When we see it, we address it. We investigate it, and we prosecute it."

Prosecuting traffickers is also becoming a priority for state law enforcement in the region.

The first person charged under Rhode Island's 2007 human trafficking law was sentenced earlier this month to 10 years in prison. Two other New England states — Vermont and Massachusetts — are among a dwindling number of states without a human trafficking statute on the books. But in January, the attorney general's offices in those two states called on lawmakers to pass comprehensive human trafficking legislation.

Prosecutors have not identified the Filipina they say Al-Ali kept from July until her October escape, but a lawsuit brought on her behalf by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund — a New York-based civil rights group — names her as Elizabeth Cabitla Ballesteros.

ICE works with non-profits to provide housing and other services for suspected victims of human trafficking. The agency generally allows suspected victims to remain in the country during criminal proceedings, often so they can participate as witnesses. Afterward, they can apply for four-year trafficking-victim visas, which can lead to permanent residence in the U.S.

"That's a huge tool we can use in a humanitarian way," Foucart said.

Ballesteros, who is in her thirties and cooperating with federal prosecutors, is in a "safe place," according to Ivy O. Suriyapos, a lawyer with the group representing her. Suriyapos declined to elaborate on Ballesteros' whereabouts.

Defense attorneys for Al-Ali have said employed the woman legally as a nanny for his 4-year-old child.

The colonel is free on $100,000 bond, but has been ordered confined mostly to his home, an order that came after he tried to flee the country while free on his own recognizance.