Assembly Bill Targets Forced Labor

As concerns over human trafficking build nationwide, a California coalition is pushing what appears to be the most comprehensive state effort to combat forced labor.

Proposed legislation that goes to the Assembly Appropriations Committee today would make human trafficking a felony offense in California and enable victims to sue their captors in state court years after they were freed. It would also expedite federal benefits such as counseling, housing and visa assistance for victims, who tend to be undocumented immigrants with little education.

The bill was crafted with support from established community groups working with trafficked victims as well as with the sponsorship of San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, who has won backing for the legislation from the California District Attorneys Assn.

A recently released report found that 10,000 people in the United States at any given time are being forced to work against their will under threat of violence. As an entryway for undocumented immigrants, California is particularly affected: Research released in February by UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center identified 57 forced labor operations in a dozen California cities between 1998 and 2003.

The bill’s principal author, Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View), became interested as a city official after Mountain View police broke up a $6-million trafficking ring that forced Chinese women to work off debts in massage parlors.

California’s proposed law is part of a shift nationwide to acknowledge the status of victims rather than subject them to arrest, Lieber said. However, she conceded that “our main challenge right now is getting a bill that costs money out of the Legislature.”

The bill has won bipartisan support, including from Appropriations Committee vice chairwoman Sharon Runner (R-Lancaster). Its estimated annual cost to the state of $700,000 in increased incarceration has not posed a particular barrier so far, Runner said, although she is pressing for civil liability limits. Opposition has been lodged only by the California Public Defenders Assn., which could not be reached for comment.

Trafficking often involves women and girls coerced to work in the sex trade, but also plagues the domestic worker, garment and agricultural industries, among others. California’s most notorious case: the 71 Thai workers liberated from virtual slavery in an El Monte sweatshop in 1995. That case spawned the Los Angeles-based Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, a national voice on the issue.

Among recent clients is 33-year-old Florencia Molina, lured in 2002 from Puebla, Mexico, to Los Angeles with promises of good pay and room and board. Instead she spent 40 days imprisoned in a garment shop where she worked from 5:30 a.m. to midnight, was fed only rice and beans and never allowed to shower. Molina eventually escaped. Her captor was prosecuted under a federal anti-trafficking law.

“She told me, ‘Dogs have more rights in this country than you,’ ” Molina, who received a special visa to remain here, said in a phone interview. The state law would ensure help for others, said Molina, who hopes to serve as the victims’ representative on an advisory committee that the legislation would create.

California’s penal code currently does not address human trafficking, so cases must be prosecuted federally under the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 or charged as kidnappings, false imprisonment, pimping and pandering or other state crimes.

The pending bill, AB22, would make trafficking in people for forced labor or services, as well as trafficking in minors , felonies under California law. It would provide for victim restitution and protect communications between victims and counselors as privileged.

While the federal statute outlaws trafficking across state lines, the state law would cover movement within the state. It also would define coercion more subtly than the federal law. Prosecutors would maintain the ability to refer cases for federal prosecution -- as they do in gun and drug cases -- if stiffer penalties would result, Harris said.

In addition, Harris said the new law would spur local law enforcement to “take ownership” of a crime that has long been overlooked and misunderstood.

Federal officials recently funneled grants to local police departments -- including in Los Angeles and Oakland -- to train officers who are often oblivious to signs of trafficking when they come into contact with victims.

To enhance enforcement efforts, the U.S. Department of Justice last fall began encouraging states to add trafficking felonies to state penal codes. Washington, Minnesota, Arizona, Missouri and Texas had already passed limited laws -- although no cases have been prosecuted under them.

Bills like California’s that include more victim services are pending in New York and Colorado, said Kevin Bales, president of Washington, D.C.-based Free the Slaves.

The state law could bring cases that currently fail to warrant federal prosecution into the criminal arena. In one recent case, undocumented and uneducated Mexican teenage boys and young men were brought to the Bay Area to work in a taco chain, said Kathleen Kim, human trafficking project director for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area -- among the groups that crafted the state bill.

They endured 18-hour shifts for little pay, were monitored closely and forced to live, in some cases, a dozen to a room.

“Scarcity of resources or federal agents may have precluded a [federal] investigation,” said Kim, who in April won a civil settlement for two of the workers. The case would likely meet the standard under the proposed state law.

“Trafficking is sort of a misnomer.... What it really is is slavery,” she said.