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Under Lynch, the eastern district is currently prosecuting at least five cases relating to the prostitution of US minors or sex trafficking.
Under Lynch, the eastern district is currently prosecuting at least five cases relating to the prostitution of US minors or sex trafficking. Photograph: J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Under Lynch, the eastern district is currently prosecuting at least five cases relating to the prostitution of US minors or sex trafficking. Photograph: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Loretta Lynch 'led the nation' on human trafficking despite Republican standoff

This article is more than 8 years old

Republican leaders say they’ll hold up Lynch’s confirmation until trafficking bill passes – and yet Lynch has been one of America’s boldest pursuers of sex traffickers, Guardian review reveals

After almost six months, the Republican blockade on the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as the next US attorney general – once a grand fight over immigration, then banking prosecutions, then abortion – appears headed for a final legislative showdown over protecting victims of sex trafficking.

But the biggest Congressional headache of the year – a single cabinet nomination effectively hijacking the legislative calendar – has culminated in “a very sad irony”: Lynch has been one of the country’s premier guardians of victims of sex trafficking, and a tireless scourge of sex traffickers, a review of her record and conversations with current and former colleagues reveal.

Lynch – according to prosecutors, officials and victims’ advocates familiar with her tenure as US attorney for the eastern district of New York – has a prodigious history of throwing sex traffickers in prison, breaking up prostitution rings, rescuing underage victims forced to work as prostitutes and reuniting mothers held captive by the rings with their long-lost children.

Heading into what could be the final day of protracted negotiations over her job as the nation’s highest law enforcement officer, Lynch’s supporters spoke at length with the Guardian about what they say is one of the most powerful legacies of her tenure.

Republicans have not challenged Lynch’s record as a prosecutor of sex trafficking – or any other part of her record. But Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has clung to an announcement that he would hold up her nomination until the Senate completed work on the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which would create a compensation fund for victims. Republican and Democratic senators are squabbling over abortion language in the bill.

“I had hoped to turn to her next week, but if we can’t finish the trafficking bill, she will be put off again,” McConnell said. More than a month later, that hold is still in place, although Republicans aides on Friday signaled potential new movement on the nomination, after President Obama called the delay “embarrassing”.

To those with close knowledge of Lynch’s record on human trafficking, the hold-up has not been embarrassing, so much as painfully wrong-headed – tantamount to holding the sheriff back until crime goes away.

Carol Robles-Román, who in 12 years as deputy mayor of New York City worked closely with Lynch’s office to stop young girls from falling victim to sex traffickers, said Lynch had made “protecting the most vulnerable members of our society a hallmark of her tenure”.

“The irony that it’s a trafficking bill that’s holding everything up is just … it’s a very sad irony,” said Robles-Román, who now runs the nonprofit Legal Momentum. “The fact of the matter is, with this record, she has been one of the top leaders in the country around the fight against human trafficking.

“This is such a difficult area for prosecutors to wrap their hands around. And her office, the eastern district, has really distinguished itself in the cases that they have brought, and the fearlessness that they have shown in prosecuting these cases.”

‘Heinous’ cases with real resolutions

Lori Cohen, director of the anti-trafficking initiative at New York-based Sanctuary for Families, has worked closely with Lynch’s office, including to reunite victims of sex trafficking with their children, who in multiple cases have been held in Mexico by members of the trafficking organization.

“The eastern district prosecutors have been exceptional in terms of their willingness to listen to the clients,” Cohen said. “And I think that, frankly, that came from the top, that came from the attorney general nominee. I think she has always had a very high degree of professionalism, but also a very strong sense of compassion for victims. And a strong sense of justice, that people who are exploiting these vulnerable immigrant women and children in the commercial sex industry need to be held accountable.”

Sex trafficking report
Investigators would discover many girls and young women living under the control of men who forced them to work in brothels. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

In the typical sex trafficking case prosecuted under Lynch, a community services organization might tip off law enforcement to the presence of a prostitution ring based in Brooklyn or Queens, New York. Investigators would discover many girls and young women living under the control of men who forced them to work in brothels or who drove them around the city, sometimes to as many as 20 assignments a day.

Anne Milgram, a former prosecutor on human trafficking cases in the eastern district, who went on to serve as attorney general of New Jersey and is now a senior fellow at the New York University school of law, said one after another of the trafficking cases were prosecuted because Lynch made them a “personal priority”.

“Under her leadership, the eastern district has really led the nation in this area,” Milgram said. “I really couldn’t say enough good things about both the office and Loretta Lynch’s record on human trafficking. If you look nationally to find a US attorney who was as thoughtful and progressive in prosecuting human trafficking cases, I don’t think you could find one.”

Lynch’s office has specialized in breaking up rings that share a remarkable similarity. Members of family-based crime syndicates in Mexico, in a repeated pattern, would seek out young girls in poor, rural areas and make them promises of love and a better life in the United States. Sometimes a marriage would follow. And then the girls would be introduced to a new life, in which they were coerced to work as prostitutes. Obedience was enforced with rape, beatings, imprisonment, and, in some cases, by threatening the lives of children born of the corrupt “love” affairs.

“Any trafficking victim is going to be suffering in a tremendous physical and emotional harm, and pretty extensive sexual abuse,” Cohen said. “But these particular Mexican trafficking cases are so difficult for our victims because usually the trafficker is an intimate partner. So it could be a man who held himself out to be a boyfriend, or a fiancé, and in at least one case it’s been a husband. Who courted a client, who won her trust, and her love, and in a number of cases had children with her.”

“You just pull the facts of one of these cases, and they’re heinous,” Robles-Román said. “They almost don’t sound real.”

The most active record in the country

Lynch’s office has specialized in breaking up these rings. The eastern district of New York has delivered more than 55 indictments in human trafficking cases and rescued more than 110 victims, including at least 20 minors, in the past 10 years.

Under Lynch, the eastern district is currently prosecuting at least five cases relating to the prostitution of US minors or sex trafficking – more active prosecutions than any other US attorney’s office in the country, according to knowledgeable observers.

In 2012, Lynch’s office reunited a child and mother who had been separated for more than 10 years when the woman was taken from Mexico to New York and forced to work as a prostitute. It was one of 18 such mother-and-child reunions completed by the eastern district.

Loretta Lynch will be formally nominated to become attorney general on Saturday, and would be the first African American woman to be appointed to the role if approved by the Senate.
Lynch’s office has specialized in breaking up these rings Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP

Cohen worked with a client who was reunited with her child after a conviction by Lynch’s office.

“It was really very moving,” Cohen said. “My client had been separated from her child for a number of years and was really frantic about her child’s safety. Frankly it’s terrifying for a victim to come forward and report the abuse, when she is afraid that if word of her cooperation gets back to her traffickers, there’s very little protection available for her child back in Mexico.

“These clients, when they have children, they are mothers first. And they’ll do anything to protect their children. In fact some of them continue to be trafficked because they were afraid that if they stopped or refused, that their children would be harmed.”

In December 2012, Lynch announced the extradition and arraignment of four suspects from Mexico in two separate sex trafficking cases. In 2013, Lynch sent a New York bar owner and two co-defendants to prison for dozens of years each for running a sex-trafficking ring between Central America, Mexico and two bars on Long Island. In 2014, three brothers convicted of sex trafficking were sentenced to double-digit prison terms for enticing victims as young as 14 to be transported illegally into the United States and forced to work as prostitutes in New York City and elsewhere.

“It’s horrible to think that children in the United States are being exploited sexually,” said Robles-Román. “They are. [But Lynch’s] office has shown that they have the courage, the know-how, and the expertise to prosecute these people – some of them involving international criminal enterprises.

“From my perspective, somebody who has that vision, and that eye, to protect our most vulnerable, can protect us all. It is a fearlessness that we need in our attorney general.”

As of Monday, after what minority leader Harry Reid called “164 very long days”, there was still no Senate deal over the abortion language in the trafficking legislation, although signs emerged that a deal may be close.

If Republicans stick to their promise, it will then be Lynch’s turn. And if she is confirmed, to hear Lynch’s former colleagues tell it, the Senate will have made a difference on behalf of society’s most vulnerable.

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