Esperanza felt desperate after one of her four children died because of the family's poor living conditions in Mexico. She didn't have the money to get healthcare for her sick daughter, her husband had left her, and the money she earned cleaning houses or in restaurant work was not enough to feed her children.

So when her sewing teacher knocked on the door and said she knew about a good job in the United States --- if she left within three days --- 20-year-old Esperanza decided to leave her remaining three children with her mother with hopes of sending money back to support them. The teacher said all her expenses to get to the U.S. would be covered, and all she had to do was provide her birth certificate and identification.

The small group flew from Mexico City to Tijuana and later crossed into San Diego. Esperanza now admits her intuition told her something wasn't right when she began to ask questions about the journey and was told to stop asking questions. Later she was told her identification could not be returned to her.

Soon enough, Esperanza and her sewing teacher were delivered to a home and a sewing shop in which an angry woman owner told the young Mexicans they owed a lot of money for their passage into the U.S. and would have to work hard to pay it off. For Esperanza it meant being forced to work 17-hour days in sweatshop conditions, having to sleep in the shop, being given ten minutes to eat one meal a day, and being told not to talk to the other workers, some of whom were being paid.

She also was threatened that her family would be harmed back in Mexico if she went to the police.

A clandestine business

Esperanza told her story before a rapt audience of nearly 400 at a March 5 symposium on human trafficking, sponsored by five religious congregations and held at Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles.

The clandestine nature of human trafficking makes it enormously difficult to accurately track how many people are affected, but the U.S. government estimates that about 17,000 to 20,000 women, men and children are trafficked into the United States each year, meaning there may be as many as 100,000 to 200,000 people in the U.S. working as modern slaves in homes, sweatshops, brothels, agricultural fields, construction projects and restaurants.

A negative consequence of globalization is the relative ease with which people can be transported around the world. The demand for exploitive labor and sex workers by some living in developed countries fuels the supply of vulnerable workers from poor countries.

"Counter trafficking measures cannot be effective unless they address the deep-rooted causes that stem from poverty and inequitable distribution of resources and from the loss of fundamental human values," said Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary Sister Veronica Brand, a sociologist based in Rome and symposium keynote speaker. "We need to find ways of addressing gender disparities in opportunities and lobby for structures and resources that empower women in poverty."

Promise and reality

Oftentimes enslaved workers are afraid to contact the police for fear of being hurt or deported. Indeed, law enforcement often first think of illegal immigrants and sex workers as criminals, not realizing that a certain percentage of them may have been lured to come to the U.S. and then forced or coerced to work.

A federal anti-trafficking law passed in 2000 makes it possible for victims --- even those here illegally --- to apply for residential visas and obtain badly needed medical and social services if they agree to assist law enforcement in the prosecution of traffickers. Traffickers can receive up to 20 years of prison time for each count of trafficking and be forced to pay back wages, although many then declare bankruptcy.

Fear after escape

About 40 days into their forced sewing labor, Esperanza and her sewing teacher managed to escape to the neighborhood corner, where they asked someone to make a phone call. Eventually, the FBI was contacted, her enslaver was prosecuted and given six months of house arrest.

Esperanza requested not to have her picture taken, still concerned about her safety.

Indeed, Esperanza's enslaver went to her Mexican hometown looking for her. "I live in hiding," she told The Tidings. Even so, she now works in retail and hopes that her children will soon be re-united with her.

In addition to federal laws against trafficking, passage of California Assembly Bill 22 would make human trafficking a state crime and facilitate local law enforcement's ability to involve local prosecutors.

In the last five years about 700 victims of human trafficking in the U.S. have been certified and given visas, said Notre Dame Sister Mary Ellen Dougherty, who administers a grant to combat human trafficking for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Sister Dougherty said Catholics have strengths they bring to this issue.

"Grounded in theology, we're disposed to see human rights issues as issues we must work on," she said. "We have networks all over the country. We have staying power."

The Los Angeles-based Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficing (CAST) is currently serving 75 clients, and the ages of clients served have ranged from three years to 65. "We're investing in human resilience," stated Imelda Buncab of CAST.

Symposium participants gasped several times throughout the day as they heard the stories and details of human trafficking.

"To see the faces behind trafficking makes it more real and challenges me to do more," said Dominican Sister Carol Monzon.

The day was an "eye-opener," added Anne Marie Reyes, parishioner at Blessed Junípero Serra Church in Camarillo, who said she had not heard before that human trafficking is quickly becoming "the number one human rights issue of our century."