by Amanda Luker
Jun 24
Federal agents arrested three Long Island residents for illegally smuggling 69 Peruvian immigrants into the United States and keeping them in "virtual servitude" until they repaid the smugglers, reports Newsday.
Assistant US Attorney Bonnie Klapper told Newsday that the Peruvians lived in squalid conditions, stuffed into two houses, as they worked only to hand over nearly all wages for the cost of room, board, transportation and the repayment of the $7,500 tourist visa and smuggling charge. Their three alleged captors, Jose Ibanez, his wife Mariluz Zavala and their daughter, Evelyn Ibanez, threatened to turn the workers over to law enforcement or harm their families in Peru if they did not pay.
Officials said a security breach allowed the Peruvians to enter the country on tourist visas without a background check.
The case is part of a larger ongoing investigation by the Justice Department, which reported in the Associated Press in May that as many as 17,500 people each year are smuggled into the United States for some sort of servitude. Human trafficking, according to a top Homeland Security Department official, generates some $9.5 billion a year for those involved. Using a law created by Congress in 2000 specifically to target human traffickers, the Justice Department had 153 open investigations in April 2004, twice that at the same time in 2001.
