Human Trafficking on Long Island

The Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force of Long Island, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Demetri Jones, joined forces with ICE as well as with members of the federal intelligence community, Nassau and Suffolk police departments and both county district attorneys. The three-year-old task force also includes two non-government organizations, Catholic Charities and Safe Horizons, which provide services to the victims and generally gain their trust with greater ease than cops, who are often perceived as corrupt or intent on deportation.

“Part of what makes it so challenging is that they take lots of time and resources,” says Robert Nardoza, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney. “Our prosecutors and case agents spend a lot of time with the victims, allaying their fears, earning their trust and convincing them that it is in their best interest to tell their stories. Plus, we need to do a lot of work to corroborate victim accounts, which can be difficult.”

“The landscape has gotten a lot worse,” says Irv Miljoner, chief of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Westbury-based regional office. As he notes, “labor exploitation equals at least the opportunity for human trafficking.”

Miljoner’s office handled 600 cases of worker complaints last year, an indicator that there is “more exploitation than ever before.” His office has investigated everything from tiny fine-dining establishments to popular fast-food restaurants. East End farms that exploit migrant workers have come across his desk as well. Despite these alarming trends, Miljoner’s agents have been unable to prove human trafficking in any cases, he says.

REVICTIMIZING THE VICTIM

Perhaps most confusing to the women who do get arrested is their being placed in jail, where they are treated like the offender instead of the victim.

“At times it’s difficult in the investigation, because the victims are technically breaking the law by practicing prostitution,” says Detective Lt. Edward Reilly, commanding officer of Suffolk Police Department’s Kidnap Investigation Team. Although the issue is prevalent in Nassau, in part because it borders New York City—a major human trafficking hub—Suffolk County is not immune, as evidenced by similar brothel raids.

But, Reilly adds, it is difficult to uncover who the true victims are, since “not every participant is a human trafficking victim.”

Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of Equality Now, an international human rights organization with offices in New York City, says otherwise. “Most of the people who are trafficked are women and girls, and most of those women and girls wind up in some form of commercial sex trade.”

And she consistently hears the same stories from survivors: “A local police precinct will raid a brothel,” she says, “But they won’t ask: ‘Where did you come from? Do you have a passport? Do you speak the language? How did you get here? Who’s keeping you here?’ You’re just charged as a prostitute.” Advocates say, though, that the attitudes within law enforcement are changing, with more officers being trained to know what to look for.

Bien-Aimé’s organization, teamed with advocacy groups statewide, formed the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition three years ago to lobby for passage of the new law. To her surprise, state lawmakers went further than she hoped.

“They’ve increased the penalties for patronizing prostitution,” she explains. “So what we’re hoping that will do is really look at sex trafficking as linked to the commercial sex trade and, in particular, prostitution.”
Still, it could have gone further, she says.

“In New York, you can’t consent to sex if you’re under 17—but if you’re a 12-year-old prostitute, you go into the criminal justice system,” Bien-Aimé says, describing how minors trafficked in the sex trade within our borders lack the same basic protections as adults. “I think that’s a huge blemish on our society that we allow children to be exploited,” she says with disgust. Meanwhile, the Safe Harbor for Exploited Youth Act, which would give exploited kids similar rights, languishes in Albany.

ALIENS IN AN ALIEN LAND

For all the efforts by politicians, police and prosecutors to root out the problem here and abroad, public awareness of the issue is raised only when these horrific cases emerge in their backyards—as with the latest alleged slave drivers, Samirah’s Gold Coast “masters” Varsha Sabhnani and her husband, Mahender Sabhnani.

When authorities raided the Sabhnanis’ Coachman Place Muttontown home on May 13, identified by Samirah as the house where, she said, she was an indentured domestic servant, it didn’t take long for the torturous details to garner international press coverage. Police found Nona, who said she was also held captive with Samirah, cowering in a tiny closet under the stairs. Like Samirah, Nona said she was recruited from Indonesia by their masters, to work for $100 and $200 monthly. Although neither was paid, $100 was mailed home each month to Samirah’s family, according to prosecutors. Both women’s passports had been confiscated.

The alleged abusers, the Sabhnanis, were charged with harboring illegal immigrants and forced labor, and are facing upwards of 20 years in federal prison. They were denied bail after prosecutors successfully argued that the two were a flight risk, having international ties through their home-based perfume company.

From now till the September trial date, as the case snakes its way through pretrial motions and an inevitable appeal to revisit the bail issue, authorities will likely turn their focus on how to uncover victims similarly held hostage at home.

“We’re the new abolitionists,” says Birbiglia, who is expanding his work beyond massage parlor investigations. He will not only be “shaking up a lot of bushes and stones” to find other domestic slaves, but also investigating exploitation of day laborers in the Hispanic community.

“In this day and age, it’s a shame that we have to have human trafficking task forces to go out there and protect these people,” Birbiglia says. And yet, when the investigations, the seedy details and the trials are behind them, those individuals who do help trafficking survivors piece their lives back together have the most gratifying jobs of all.