Miami hotels prepare for Super Bowl influx of sex and labor traffickers
Super Bowl 54 is coming to South Florida and bringing a flood of human traffickers and trafficking victims with it.
To prepare, the hotel industry convened an anti-trafficking summit Thursday at the Fontainebleau resort in Miami Beach and trained employees how to recognize and report criminal behavior.
“When there’s an influx of thousands of people, trafficking will go up,” said Sarah de Carvalho, CEO of the It’s a Penalty campaign. “Traffickers want to make more money, so they converge on large events.”
About 40 million people — mostly women and girls — are trapped in the $150 billion sex and labor trafficking industry, second only to drug trafficking as the world’s largest criminal industry, according to the International Labor Organization and the Polaris Project. Traffickers use threats, abuse, deception, debt bondage, and other manipulative tactics to force victims into commercial sex or to provide work against their will.
Miami-Dade County, already the biggest hub of trafficking in Florida, will host the nation’s largest sporting event Feb. 2 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. That means visitors, fans and corporate high rollers will be streaming into South Florida. Traffickers have already plotted where they and their victims will stay, where they can target sex buyers and where they can exploit the laborers and service workers under their control.
“These are difficult cases because the victims are usually kids who have been traumatized, raped, drugged and isolated for so long,” said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. “Collaboration with private business is the way to be successful. We had a case in a local hotel where a security guard saw a flyer for a missing child, noticed a girl staying in a room with people constantly going in and out. She was a 16-year-old who had been raped 24 times in 24 hours. The security guard found that girl.”
It’s a Penalty is launching its third pre-Super Bowl operation. The FBI made 169 arrests related to human trafficking before last year’s Super Bowl in Atlanta and 110 arrests in Minneapolis before the 2018 game. Calls to trafficking hotlines increased 23 percent before last year’s Super Bowl, and two dozen victims were rescued in Atlanta, including five children on one day as a result of tip calls from hotels. The organization’s first campaign was conducted in the runup to the 2014 men’s World Cup in Brazil, with more accompanying the Olympics, Paralympics and Commonwealth Games and plans to engage the NBA and the International Cricket Council.
“When we started no one wanted to talk about it,” said de Carvalho, whose organization has produced a video featuring NFL players Aaron Rodgers and Ryan Tannehill that plays on British Airways and American Airlines flights. “We’ve really seen an increase in support from sport and the hotel industry. Our campaigns reach 155 million people. We raise awareness, teach people how to spot trafficking, provide a hotline and emphasize that if you see something, say something. Call, text, save lives.”
Hoteliers from the American Hotel and Lodging Association have created the “No Room for Trafficking” campaign in partnership with advocacy organizations and law enforcement authorities to educate employees on how to be vigilant and identify signs of trafficking.
“We have developed a culture here that encourages everyone to report suspicious activity,” said Mary Rogers, vice president and general manager of the Fontainebleau. “If you see a guest checking in with a same-day reservation and cash, or a guest requesting extra towels and sheets and not allowing us into the room, or a privacy sign on the door for several days, call the police. Our employees play a vital role.”
Fernandez Rundle said awareness and understanding of the complex crime of trafficking has mushroomed.
“We’ve taken a huge step forward because industry and the public have embraced these campaigns,” she said. “We now recognize what it isn’t: The idea from the movies, from Liam Neeson in “Taken.” When the local Super Bowl host committee came to me and said the NFL considers prevention a priority, that’s a big difference from the last time we hosted a Super Bowl 10 years ago and it wasn’t discussed.”
Traffickers, who tend to recruit vulnerable people — increasingly on social media by developing a trusting relationship with promises of money and opportunity — often move their victims around the country to reduce the risk of being caught. They can be found at hotels in the front lobby, the bar, the pool area. They don’t look like a parent or guardian. The people they have in servitude may appear fearful, tense, submissive, malnourished, disoriented, or they have no form of identification and little luggage, said Alexandra Perron from the advocacy group A21.
“It’s all about control of their minds, bodies and souls,” Perron said. “If you overhear a conversation about forced labor, if you see a john coming into a hotel to meet a victim, report it even if you think it seems silly. In Florida, you are required by law to report suspected abuse, neglect or abandonment of children.”
Barbara Martinez, chief of the special prosecution section at the U.S. Attorney’s office, said victims “can be from anywhere or look like anyone.”
“We all have a gut feeling when we see something that doesn’t look right,” she said. “We want people to act on that feeling. It could save a life.”
Ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft as well as restaurant owners, tourism leaders and hospitality industry officials are also involved in pre-Super Bowl awareness campaigns.
Authorities and advocates at the summit recommended calling 911 or the local trafficking hotline at 305-FIX-STOP or the national trafficking hotline at 888-373-7888 or texting to BeFree, 233733.
