North Carolina and Human Trafficking
North Carolina has been recognized as a major human trafficking hub on the east coast. It wasn’t too long ago (2007) that the state passed a resolution to apologize for the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.
N.C. human trafficking case shows plight of girls forced into prostitution | McClatchy:
Each day, Flores prayed to Santa Muerte, or “Saint Death,” joined by the teenage girls whom he forced to have sex with as many as 20 men a day.
Flores, 45, was a notorious operator in a city that has become a center for sex trafficking along the East Coast.
Local and federal authorities are not sure how extensive the Charlotte sex rings have become. They say Flores’ ring brought in hundreds of young women each year to work as prostitutes.
Flores was convicted of trafficking in April. But authorities say other pimps in Charlotte continue to prey on young girls from poor countries.
“I don’t think we really realized how big this was,” says Delbert Richburg, assistant special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Investigations in Charlotte. “We’re probably just scratching the surface.”
The growth is so extensive that this month ICE stationed a team of agents in Charlotte to focus on human trafficking, smuggling and exploitation. Across the Carolinas, immigrant sex rings have been broken up in Monroe, Durham and Columbia.
