As a young patrol officer nearly 20 years ago, Thum entered a house that had no real bedrooms, just a bunch of mattresses on the floor with dividers between the rooms. Thum, who became police chief in , has joined state and federal law enforcement in making significant strides in recognizing the signs of labor trafficking over the past two decades in South Dakota.
Sign up to receive our journalism in your email. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Many victims are foreign nationals on temporary visas or undocumented immigrants, allowing traffickers to use cultural barriers and the threat of deportation as leverage. While investigators use "stings" and social media to combat sex trafficking, labor-related offenses typically involve conspiracy and fraud across multiple jurisdictions, including U.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nationally, there were 1, people prosecuted federally for human trafficking in , according to the most recent data available through the U. Department of Justice. That included prosecutions for sex trafficking and for labor trafficking. Labor trafficking involves recruiting, harboring or transporting a person through the use of force, fraud or coercion. Victims are forced to work against their will or pay off a loan or service whose terms are not clearly defined.
On April 4, at U. District Court in Sioux Falls, a Guatemalan national named William Godoy was found guilty of recruiting, transporting and harboring two men from Guatemala for the purpose of financial gain, threatening them with physical harm and restricting their movement.
He was also found guilty of illegally re-entering the country after deportation and illegal possession of a firearm. Jordan Bruxfoort, founder of the Naomi Project , a Sioux Falls nonprofit that advocates for trafficking victims, helped Ruiz and Ordonez separate themselves from Godoy and provide information and testimony to prosecutors, led by U.
