“It’s a huge problem all over the United States.”
The Polk County Sheriff’s Office operation, conducted with help from numerous local and federal law enforcement agencies, including the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, Lake County Sheriff’s Office, the US Department of Homeland Security and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), also identified four suspected trafficking victims.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who has spent 15 years engineering and leading similar sting operations, said that many such victims have come to America illegally and are forced to pay their debt off to their “coyotes” who engineered their entry. The usual payback method is prostitution.
“They’re paying $15,000–20,000 to human traffickers in order to get in this country. Some of them know that they have to prostitute. They’re told: You just have to work it off,” he said.
“What we see many times is these human traffickers, these pimps as they’re called on the street, they’ll actually brand or tattoo their ladies, and that just fires me up.”
One of the four victims had left her toddler in the car with a suspected trafficker, who was also arrested.
The arrests included 36 illegal immigrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Colombia, Guatemala and Brazil, who will be taken into ICE custody once their criminal cases conclude.
Human trafficking is a pestilence that does not discriminate according to age, race or social status. Among the “usual suspects” will often be found community leaders and those in the public eye—who, one would expect, would be held to a higher standard.
Those apprehended in the operation included a medical doctor, an American Red Cross executive and former Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Adarius Taylor.
When questioned by a reporter, Taylor just buried his head in his hands. While he was in a hotel room talking to an undercover detective posing as a prostitute, his six-year-old autistic son waited alone in the car. Taylor was charged with soliciting a prostitute and with one count of negligent child abuse without bodily harm.
Of the estimated 100,000 to 150,000 nationwide victims of sex trafficking, Florida ranks among the top three violators, along with Texas and California. Last summer, a sting in neighboring Hillsborough County nabbed 148 suspects and recovered seven victims.
At the time, Florida State Attorney Suzy Lopez said: “I want these criminals—these human traffickers—to know that human trafficking in the state of Florida carries a mandatory minimum sentence of life.”
“It’s a huge problem all over the United States,” Sheriff Judd said of sex trafficking, part of the worldwide human trafficking industry that nets an estimated $150 billion annually and enslaves 49.6 million human beings.
“No one has the right to treat a human being like their property,” he said.
