Customs Agents: Sex Trafficking Major Problem In Georgia

[JBeukema]

“Victims ranging in age from 14 on up; men, women, children from all across the globe, from Mexico, from Central and South America, Asia, India, Africa, eastern Europe,” said Brock Nicholson, special agent in charge for ICE. “Atlanta is a large metropolitan area, a large customer base for the sex trafficking business. They are brought in, sometimes voluntarily thinking that they have a great job or a wonderful romance, and it's quickly dashed when they find themselves forced into prostitution.”

 

[waltky]

Enrique keepin' quiet on drug violence...

Mexico's new president mostly mum on drug violence
Jan 29,`13 -- Two months after President Enrique Pena Nieto took office promising to reduce violent crime, the killings linked to Mexico's drug cartels continue unabated. Only the government's talk about them has dropped.

Eighteen members of a band and its retinue were kidnapped and apparently slain over the weekend in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon by gunmen who asked them to name their cartel affiliation before they were shot and dumped in a well. Fourteen prisoners and nine guards died in an attempted prison escape in Durango state. Nine men were slain Christmas eve in Sinaloa. In the state of Mexico, which borders the capital, more than a dozen bodies were found last week, some dismembered. The difference under this administration is that there have been no major press conferences announcing more troops or federal police for drug-plagued hotspots. Gone are the regular parades of newly arrested drug suspects before the media with their weapons, cash or contraband.

Pena Nieto has been mum, instead touting education, fiscal and energy reforms. On Monday, he told a summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Chile that he wants Mexico to focus on being a player in solving world and regional problems. Some political observers praise him for trying to change the conversation and presenting an alternative face of Mexico. Critics suggest the country's new leaders believe that the best way to solve a security crisis is to create distractions. "What Pena Nieto is doing is ... sweeping violence under the rug in hopes that no one notices," said security expert Jorge Chabat. "It can be effective in the short term, until the violence becomes so obvious that you can't change the subject."

The Pena Nieto government declined to respond publicly to the critics. But in an interview last month with The Associated Press, he said he would not put any goals or deadlines on his campaign against organized crime and would focus on prevention. "That way we avoid generating fertile ground where violence and insecurity can keep growing," Pena Nieto said. Secretary of Interior Jose Osorio Chong had a closed-door meeting with the governors of Mexico's central states about security on Monday. In a press conference afterward, he promised to increase patrols along a highway system already bristling with military and police roadblocks and checkpoints.

The apparent weekend killing of 18 members of Kombo Kolombia, which had played at a private performance late Thursday, was the largest mass kidnapping and killing since 20 tourists disappeared and were later found dead in 2011 near the resort city of Acapulco. Searchers this week were pulling bodies from a well in northern Mexico that they said likely belonged to the band. An area known as the Laguna, where Coahuila and Durango states meet, has been the scene of numerous battles between factions of the Sinaloa and the Zetas cartels.

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Mexico breaks up alleged border sex-slavery cult
Jan 29,`13 -- Mexican officials broke up a bizarre cult that allegedly ran a sex-slavery ring among its followers on the U.S. border, authorities said Tuesday.

The "Defensores de Cristo" or "Defenders of Christ" cult allegedly recruited women to have sex with a Spanish man who claimed he was the reincarnation of Christ. Followers were subjected to forced labor or sexual services, including prostitution, according to a victims' advocacy group that said it filed a complaint more than a year ago about the cult. Federal police, agents of Mexico's National Immigration Institute and prosecutors raided a house earlier this week near Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, and found cult members, including children, living in filthy conditions. The institute said 14 foreigners were detained in the raid and have been turned over to prosecutors, pending possible charges.

Those detained include six Spaniards, and two people each from Brazil, Bolivia and Venezuela. One person from Argentina and one from Ecuador were also detained. Spain's Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed its citizens were among those arrested. The institute said 10 Mexicans were also found at the house, mainly women, and are presumably among the victims of the cult. The Attorney General's Office said the investigation was still under way as to what charges, if any, might apply in the case. Given the binds of sect loyalty that had been built over an estimated three years, prosecutors were still trying to work out which of the detainees may be considered victims, and which were abusers.

The institute said the sect's leaders made members pay "tithes," with money or forced labor. An official of the immigration institute who was not authorized to be quoted by name said that women were recruited to the sect and then were forced to have sex with sect elders; the official described it as a form of human trafficking that included prostitution. Spaniard Ignacio Gonzalez de Arriba set up shop in Mexico about three years ago, after a stint in Brazil and other parts of South America, said Myrna Garcia, an activist with the Support Network for Cult Victims who has worked with victims of the Defenders of Christ cult.

He became involved in offering courses on "bio-programming," an esoteric practice that claims to allow practicants to "reprogram" their brains to eliminate pain, suffering and anxiety, according to immigration institute. Gonzalez de Arriba or other detainees could not be reached for comment on Tuesday. A number listed in an advertisement for the "bio-programming" courses was disconnected.

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