Super Bowl a magnet for human traffickers

[sonias]

Wonderful OpEd by Texas State Senator Leticia VanDe Putte!

San Antonio Express News 2/11/11
Super Bowl a magnet for human traffickers
Law on the watch for offenders this weekend.

Super Bowl Sunday is an American pastime; a day spent enjoying friends, family, food and football. But the Super Bowl has a seedy side. As thousands of fans flock to Texas for America's biggest sporting event, human traffickers are preparing to bring in hundreds of women and children to serve as sex slaves for what is also America's biggest sex trafficking weekend.

Human trafficking is modern-day slavery and is the term law enforcement has begun to use to describe the act of coercing a woman or child to commit a commercial sex act. It is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world, and Texas is already a hub for trafficking, given our geography. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Texas accounts for 25 percent of human trafficking victims in the nation. And that number is sure to spike on Feb. 6 with the expected surge of sex trafficking associated with the Super Bowl.

In 2009, the Legislature created the Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force housed under the office of Attorney General. The task force worked to develop policies and procedures to assist in preventing and prosecuting human trafficking crimes, to collect and publish data on the extent of human trafficking in Texas and to align existing state resources to fight human trafficking. The task force met in November in Arlington to discuss the implementation of local, state and federal resources to crack down on prostitution and targeting traffickers surrounding the game.

At the meeting in Arlington, Attorney General Greg Abbott explained that during the 2009 Super Bowl in Tampa, 24 children were rescued from sex trafficking and that an anti-trafficking coalition estimated that tens of thousands of people were trafficked during the days surrounding the Miami game last year. On the eve of this year's Super Bowl, we should be most concerned with preventing a similar flood of sex slaves from being trafficked through Texas instead of whether the Packers or the Steelers ultimately hoists the Lombardi Trophy.

The ugly truth and we have to face it.

:kick:

[luvspeas]

1. Texas does have a real problem with this to begin with...

so it does not surprise me.

[sonias]

2. The focus on us this weekend will be good

I would love to see some major news stories pick up on this.

Texas does indeed have a problem with this year round, but it gets swept under the rug so to speak.

[thanks_imjustlurking]

3. I either saw a story or got an email

from a Dallas group that is working against this. I wrote them to ask if there was a similar group in the Houston area. Unfortunately, they never replied, and I lost the link/email/whatever it was, since I was expecting a reply anyway.....

[sonias]

4. Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force

The state has not funded this project as of yet. And with the budget crisis - my guess is they are going to just let it quietly do nothing.

A report has been produced -

The Texas Human Trafficking Prevention Task Force
www.oag.state.tx.us/ag_publications/pdfs/human_trafficking.pdf

[thanks_imjustlurking]

5. Yeah, I'm sure the state's not going to do anything.

I think this is the organization I was thinking of:
http://www.traffick911.com/

The logo looks like something I remember. I hadn't realized they were faith-based, but I'm just happy *somebody* is paying attention to this.

[white cloud]

6. Grand Old Party

Got to have their fun. Move along people. We have priorities like--need Liqour on Sunday and voter registration.