forced

laborsexual
sex slavery
forced labor
slaverypros
prostitution entertainment sweatshop commercial exploitation
debt bondage sexual exploitation forced marriage stranger
friend family local trans-national surrogacy force fraud psychological coercion domestic
servitude human trafficking organ removal implantation or
manipulation deception abuse
migrant smuggling child labor
child pornography illicit international adoption child soldiers
brothel bonded labor manufac-

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feature.

human trafficking in michigan.

eva rosenfeld

It was nighttime in Lansing, Mich. Claras,

a local restaurant built into the historic
Michigan Central Railroad Depot, was quiet on Michigan Ave. Down the street, tenyear-old Christina Linguidi climbed down a
fire escape.
Linguidis parents met when her mother
was 14 and her father in his late 20s, a soldier. He picked her up hitchhiking and she
got pregnant with Linguidi soon after. They
were married when she was 16. Growing up
in that home, Linguidi was sexually assaulted by her father and her male babysitter,
and eventually put into foster care.
The foster home turned out to also be an
abusive environment. At ten, Linguidi ran
away with her foster siblings. It turned out
that they were going to the home of her
16-year-old foster sisters pimp.
She was prostituted out by him until she
escaped down a fire escape. She was then
placed into a new foster home. There, her
foster mothers girlfriend sold her to a male
relative, whose house she was sent to every day. Once again, Linguidi was sold into
trafficking.
Finally, when Linguidi was 16, she moved
to Vista Maria, a Social Services organization in Dearborn Heights, Mich. From there
she went on to college and began speaking
out about her experiences as a victim of human trafficking. She has also worked with
various organization to combat human
trafficking and is writing a book about her
experiences.
I know I cant change what happened to
me, but I can change it happening to somebody else, so its given me a passion, Linguidi said.
Linguidi worries that the foster care system is very susceptible to abuse and human
trafficking because of the prevalence of
high-risk children who are already vulnerable. She experienced this firsthand.

I was exposed to that stuff at a very young

age, so I didnt have any red flag sign of
what was normal or what wasnt normal,
she said. She also pointed out that when
people who have already been emotionally
traumatized, traffickers play on their vulnerability.
Oh, I understand. Im gonna protect you.
Im gonna help you, she said. You think
this person loves you, and its not till you
defy them that you realize [they dont],
but then you still go back to them because
theyre still taking care of you, giving you
clothes. Its like a family.
Linguidis foster sister fell into this pattern with her pimp.
She didnt look at it
as being trafficked,
Linguidi said. She
looked at it as he took
care of her. He bought
her things -- jewelry
and purses and clothes
-- she was brainwashed
and didnt see the truth
of what was happening.
Linguidi also had
friends in the foster care
system who were be-

ing trafficked. Many ended up pregnant or

falling into cycles of abusive relationships
into adulthood. While Linguidi speaks out
about her past, many of her friends have
chosen to leave it behind.
For people going through human trafficking now, Linguini offered this message: I
think you need to believe that these people
dont have whats best for you. Its easy to
find love in the wrong places. You need to
seek help. Learn the red flags of an abusive
relationship and that if someone hurts you
theyre going to continuously hurt you.
Although today Linguidi has found a support system in her church, throughout her

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You need to believe that these

people dont have whats best for
you. Its easy to find love in the
wrong places. You need to seek
help. Learn the red flags of an
abusive relationship and that if
someone hurts you theyre going
to continuously hurt you.
youth she had no one to check in on her.
[If] somebody was on my side and
didnt just look at me as a troubled foster care kid, if they looked at the whole
situation of my background and what Id
come from, I think it would have been
different, she said. But in her experience, law enforcement and social services were overwhelmed.
My caseworker had probably 40 cases
on her caseload. Shes supposed to have
20, she said. I even had a caseworker
tell me later, I knew things were wrong
but [my] hands were tied.
There are, however, efforts in Michigan that work to provide more services
to victims of human trafficking. The Human Trafficking Clinic at the University
of Michigan Law School provides legal
support to victims of human trafficking.
It was founded in 2009 and is the only
human trafficking clinic in the county.
Students in the program, along with a
partner and an adult supervisor, provide
services to several clients over the course
of a semester. Clients come to the clinic through many different routes. One
is the Polaris Project, a national organization with a human trafficking hotline
which people can call at any time to be
fielded to a place to get services. Some
find out about the clinic on their own, or

30 th e c o mmunic at o r

by googling terms or things that are happening to them, and human trafficking
comes up. Sometimes law enforcement
might refer them to the clinic.
The clinic has dozens clients with a
wide variety of needs. Human trafficking is divided into two subsections: labor
trafficking and sex trafficking.
The term human trafficking is a legal
term that the federal government uses to
identify somebody as a victim, and then
they get many services through their
victimization, said Toce, a law student
working in the clinic. And then also
theres a criminal aspect to criminalize
the act of enslaving somebody and being
a human trafficker, so they can be prosecuted by the federal government as well,
the traffickers or pimps or bosses. Our
clients really range from the most obvious sex trafficking story that you hear.
Young nave girl comes to a new city
and maybe starts dancing or stripping
in some places. Someone tells them, you
could make more money doing this, and
then quickly shes either brought somewhere else or isolated from her family.
According to Toce, many people dont
think of Michigan as a hub of trafficking.
But its a border state, which a lot of
people forget about, and Detroit is kind
of a city with less than optimal oppor-

tunities for somebody, which frequently

push people who are already at the margins further out, she said.
Linguidi echoed this sentiment, noting
that another vulnerable group is homeless women and youth and LGBT youth,
people who are already socially marginalized.
Most people cant imagine that its
happening in Ann Arbor, or Lansing,
Linguidi said. People dont want to see
it. If you see it you cant stand for the injustice, and so its easier to turn a blind
eye and say, theres no way thats happening in my city. Its also easy to see it
as happening in other countries, but not
in America.
The clinic serves victims of sex trafficking who, like Linguidi, have been forced
to prostitute themselves in Michigan or
around the country. To be legally classified as a victim of sex trafficking, Toce
explained, you have to be obtained, harbored, procured and a few other things,
through the use of force, fraud or coercion. And thats kind of an important key
because it take the voluntariness out of
it and somebody has to force you, but it
doesnt have to be physical abuse. It can
be all different types of intimidation tactics that people use for the purpose of
slavery or peonage or death bondage.

Most people cant imagine that

its happening in Ann Arbor, or
Lansing. People dont want to
see it. If you see it you cant stand
for the injustice, and so its easier to turn a blind eye and say,
theres no way thats happening
in my city.
Many of the clients in the clinic are
victims of labor trafficking, which takes
many different shapes. These people are
frequently foreign nationals, many of
whom are duped into coming to the US
by fraudulent promises of getting a visa
or a job. Many of these people have put a
lot of money into traveling to the US, and
when they arrive are exploited for labor.
There are a lot of clients from India,
a lot from Togo, a small country in Africa, Toce said. We have a lot of girls who
were found forced to hair-braid for 17
hours on end and they were kept in this
house and secluded for years and years
and years. Its a lot of visa manipulation
and promises that if you come here well
pay you, well house you, well set you up.
Itll be great, youll have a job. They arrive
and theyll be living in the back of a store
with bugs and its disgusting. Especially
if youre here illegally, a lot of victims
easily fall prey to an idea that theres no
help for them, no resource, and they feel
indebted in a lot of ways - not even angry
at their situation, but, how will they pay
off the money that supposedly they owe
to the person who brought them here?
Unfamiliarity with the way that our law
enforcement works, unfamiliarity with
the way that or visa system and immigration work, and then they find that theyve

been here for five years working endless

hours but they dont have legal status
here and they have made no money because theyre not getting paid.
Many people come from well-to-do
families in another country and come to
the US to find a better life.
They want to fulfill the American
dream, Toce said. Many dont identify
as being victims, and then once youre
called a victim, theres a lot of shame that
can come with that: how was I so stupid
to let this happen to me? How did I not
think better? When, in reality, when you
have a dream its easy to put blinders
on and not see whats really happening.
And the tactics that people use to coerce
people are extremely subtle and very well
thought-out. Some people think that this
is just the way that it is in America, or
this is just how my life is going to be.
One of my clients, a couple, thought,
no, were not victims of human trafficking, thats for girls from Russia who are
prostituted, said Toce. We think of it
as only one thing sometimes. They dont
realize that not only is the definition very
broad, but there doesnt need to be such
a stigma about it.
Linguidi believes that a better understanding of human trafficking is necessary not only from those experiencing it,

but from people in positions to help stop

it.
You have to have everyone on board
and seeing the same thing, she said,
especially the men in politics, seeing
that trafficking is trafficking and rape is
rape. You have to have them seeing that
this isnt the womans fault, this isnt the
girls fault. A kid cant consent to this
kind of thing, nor would they. There are
a lot more men standing up for it now but
also a lot more men who still look at it
and say that woman should be prosecuted or that 16-year-old should be in trouble. And thats not the case.
She also emphasized that this can not
be a fad issue that is quickly dismissed
- its institutional. [Traffickers] are
making billions of dollars, she said. If
youre watching any pornography movie
many of them have been trafficked. Men
dont think about that Organizations,
like sports organizations and fraternities
are allowed to get away with things too
much. Its happening all over the place
We need people willing to stand up and
say no.

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