Virginia: Immigration-Linked Prostitution Cases Pose Challenge
Theresa Vargas reports on the Washington Post:
. . . "A lot of girls we’ve interviewed don’t even know what city they are in or what state they’re in," said 1st Sgt. Daniel Hess, commander of a street crime unit that has handled several of the prostitution cases.
Before county police began the illegal-immigration initiative, they tried to prepare for every scenario. But a closer look at the rings reveals that the line between the local crime of prostitution and the federal crime of sex trafficking is often blurred in subtle details. Did the women knowingly choose to work as prostitutes? Or were they pushed into it by force, fraud or coercion? . . .
Unlike massage parlors that sell sex, the prostitution rings are harder to track because they move from one short-term rental home to another