May 14,
2014
TIJUANA, MEXICO
Mexican
police raided a maquiladora on the outskirts of the city of Tijuana on Tuesday,
May 13, 2014, under a joint operation of local Mexican and FBI intelligence agents.
The agents found that the managers of the factory had strong connections with
the Arellano Felix organization (also known as the Tijuana Cartel). Upon
inspection, police found not only several tons of drugs awaiting shipment, but
large numbers of both Mexican and Central American women claiming to have been
forced to work at the factory.
Police
found that most of the women working had come to the factory voluntarily, but
also heard from nearly a dozen women, who claimed to have been kidnapped, and at
least ten individuals, who claimed to have been brought there by smugglers who
had promised safe passage to the United States. Tijuana, located on the border
directly adjacent to San Diego, is home to numerous maquiladoras, a type of
factory established in a joint US-Mexico Free Trade Zone where goods produced
in Mexico are easily transported to the United States. Many maquiladoras
utilize agreements between the two countries that provide preapproved export
licenses limiting shipment inspection and transport delay times.
Maria
Munez, a 22 year old woman who grew up in Tijuana and chose to work at the
factory since she was 17, spoke with Amnesty International about the event.
“Sometimes co-workers would disappear. Like, I would go to work and someone who
I’d been working with for weeks wouldn’t be there that day, or the next few
days. I would try to ask other women there and they just said to be quiet about
it, and that they didn’t know anything. After the first few times this happened,
I stopped asking. I didn’t want to be next. I think it instilled a sort of
silent fear amongst everyone. I didn’t know if these women were disappearing
because of working here, or if there were disappearances happening all over the
city.” Further accounts show that these disappeared women were likely moved
across the border to San Diego, where local gangs have increasingly turned to
sex trafficking as lucrative source of income.
One woman
who had been cooperating with smugglers in hopes of crossing the US Border told
Amnesty International that she had been brought there from her home outside of the
Mexican state of Chihuahua, and was told to work until the smuggler returned
for her. She then went on to tell us that she had been there for several months
waiting for his return. “Even though I was still in Mexico, I could not just
leave or tell the police what happened. Police never go for the smuggler, but
are more than happy to stick you in prison for working with one, or use this
opportunity to blackmail people. I also couldn’t just leave when I had already paid
so much money. The managers knew exactly who was here because of the smugglers
too, and have not paid me for any of the work I’ve done. I’m completely trapped
here.”
A Unique
Story- Is there a changing dynamic of trafficking?
This
event portrays the ever changing dynamic of shadow economies like human and
drug trafficking. Though the Tijuana Cartel has been gradually dwindling since
its violent and aggressive apex in the 1990s, the arrests of a number of cartel
leaders and family members in the mid-2000s severely diminished the power of
this particular cartel. However, since the 2008 arrest of the last founding
brother, Eduardo Arellano Felix, the cartel fractured into groups which allied
themselves with the much more powerful Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels. The
alliance with the Los Zetas is particularly new as the two groups have
historically been enemies.
Second,
the use of a maquiladora for drug trafficking and human smuggling operations is
a relatively new phenomenon, or at least new to local police authorities.
Maquiladoras have a long history of various human rights violations including forced
labor, difficult and dangerous working conditions, and decrepit environmental
conditions, many of which have yet to be sufficiently addressed. However, using
a maquiladora as a staging base for actual drug shipment and human trafficking
across the US Border is a particularly risky endeavor, because of the foreign
ownership aspect. The owner of this particular maquiladora has not yet been publicly identified, thus there has been no comment, yet, on the situation.
Finally,
while cartels and other criminal organizations have long been involved in human
and sex trafficking industries, recent information shows that sex trafficking
is surpassing drug trafficking in some areas as the most profitable industry
for cartels. Reports from earlier this year show that in San Diego in
particular, sex trafficking cases have skyrocketed because of the growing
profit margins. Information gathered from a case in San Diego revealed a
sophisticated sex trafficking market which spans 46 cities and 28 states.
Individual girls can generate anywhere from $500-$10,000 a night depending on
where they work and whether there is an event going on in the city. The nature
of prostitution means that an individual girl can be sold over and over to
multiple clients in one night.
Amnesty
International calls upon the US and Mexico to fully investigate this case to
better understand the nature of human trafficking across the US Border, and its
connection with drug trafficking and the Mexican Drug Cartels. Furthermore,
Amnesty International urges the Mexican authorities to provide justice to the
victims of human trafficking who were rescued at this particular maquiladora— these
women deserve to have their rights protected and to be served justice. Amnesty
International believes that this particular case, while unprecedented, may
serve as the precedent for future discoveries.
