LAPD Frees Wrongfully Arrested Sex Trafficking Victims

by Alex DiBranco · 2011-01-21 08:58:00 UTC
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Last month, the Los Angeles Police Department decided to conduct an illegal de facto immigration raid, swooping up 78 women who displayed clear markers of human trafficking victims and treating them like criminals, while Club 907, the exploiter, faced no charges.

Now, Lauren Markham reports on Immigrant Rights that the women arrested for undocumented status have finally been released, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the Raids Response Network of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Ms. Magazine, and the over 1,300 Change.org members who signed a petition telling the LAPD how to treat trafficking victims. After being locked up over Christmas and New Year's, these women, a majority of them mothers, can finally go home.

While it's a victory for these women to be released, there's a glaring deficiency that mellows the celebration: the club hasn't been confronted with any repercussions for using trafficked women, paying them unfair wages, or forcing them into prostitution. And while the club continues its work unmolested, advertising for replacement dancers to exploit within a week, some of the women that were arrested still face immigration court proceedings and potential deportation, without, it appears so far, access to special protections for trafficking survivors.

That is unacceptable. Tell the LAPD that this isn't enough. If you haven't already signed this petition to ask the LAPD to investigate the potential trafficking and exploitation of these women, and to set up a training schedule with an anti-trafficking group to avoid this situation in the future, please do so now. We can't let traffickers, the true criminals in this situation, get away without consequences.

Photo credit: billsoPHOTO

Alex DiBranco is a Change.org Editor who has worked for the Nation, Political Research Associates, and the Center for American Progress. She is now based in New York City.

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