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‘Golden unicorn’ approach makes a dent but exposes scale.
Human trafficking is a major industry in the U.S., but one of the problems in identifying what it is is because it looks like many things to many people. In the Midwest, trafficking is dominant because of the intersection of federal interstates that easily transport victims through a circuit that can span all the major cities in just a week, spurred by online advertising that authorities say is difficult to stop. This new series will look at the sex trafficking of minors, labor trafficking found on major farm operations. A third story will look at how trafficking has hit Cook County, Illinois, the heart of Chicago, and how a local sheriff there has made stopping it one of his highest priorities.
Last May, federal authorities in Chicago broke open a sex-trafficking ring operating in plain sight. What they found was an operation involving hundreds of Thai women traveling from Bangkok to Chicago, since 2009, who ended up sex slaves. Many were forced to undergo cosmetic enhancements such as breast enlargement before they stepped on the plane. All owed tens of thousands of dollars for their travel and housing — financial shackles that would keep them ensnared in prostitution with little chance for freedom.
The international scope of the ring — women arriving in Chicago and then farmed out to other cities, like Dallas and Minneapolis — is not common in Cook County, the second-most populous county in the United States. Trafficking in the Chicagoland area mostly involves native-born women and is confined within the region. In Cook County and under Illinois law, any person under the age of 18 who is involved in the commercial sex trade is recognized as a trafficking victim.
What makes the Thai case even more unusual is how Tom Dart, the Cook County sheriff, approached the rescued prostitutes, all of whom federal authorities wanted to deport immediately.
“They’re victims,” Dart announced at the time. “We want to make sure the victims aren’t put in a worse place than they were in here.”
Dart’s victim-centric approach has made him a national figure in the fight against human trafficking. Starting when he took office 12 years ago, Dart has innovated ways to combat online trafficking and has taken the lead at shifting the focus from the women or young girls to the pimps and their buyers. It is a cultural shift that has been a long time coming in this fight that, for many, continues to be a struggle since it operates largely in the dark and relies on its most vulnerable party — the victims — to come forward.