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compiled from wire sources
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An interstate that runs
from California to
Florida has become a magnet for human traffickers seeking to exploit labor needs on the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said.
“The thirst for freedom and opportunity is part of the human spirit and is very strong in this world,” Gonzales said at a conference on human trafficking. “To offer it as a lure, for purposes of a crime, in unconscionable.”
Nearly $8 million is being used to set up 10 new task forces, partnerships between law enforcement agencies and social service groups, to investigate and prosecute trafficking cases and to help victims. Roughly $450,000 of that will go to Louisiana.
Jim Letten, the New Orleans-based U.S. attorney, said the opportunity for exploitation in the state, and particularly hard-hit New Orleans, is ripe.
Thousands of migrant or unskilled workers are estimated to be in the area to work, he said. And with Interstate 10, which skirts the Mexican border in Texas and runs through Louisiana, traditionally seen as a pipeline for moving drugs, there is a strong opportunity to use the route to move people, Letten said.
“New Orleans is a frontier town now,” Letten said in an interview.
Other states set to receive funds for new task forces are Florida, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Texas and Utah, as well as the commonwealth of Northern Marianas. Already, 32 task forces are established around the country, in some of the same states getting new groups, and in U.S. territories, according to the Justice Department.
Each year, traffickers bring up to 17,500 people, mostly women and children, into the United States to be prostitutes, work in sweat shops or otherwise work in forced labor situations, Gonzales said.
The number of human trafficking cases brought by prosecutors has risen in recent years, according to the Justice Department. Gonzales credited the rise in cases to an increased focus on the issue and partnerships between agencies.
“Freedom is guaranteed only with vigilance,” he said.
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