Area Police Try to Combat a Proliferation of Brothels

Women whose names and cell phone numbers were listed in court documents in a case related to the Aparicio investigation told The Washington Post that they simply used the vans for transportation between the New York area and the Washington region.

Montgomery detectives say the overwhelming majority of the prostitutes are undocumented women from Latin America; most are from Mexico.

Despite a recent push by Congress and the White House to combat sex trafficking, local police who investigate these cases said they often find it hard to discern between victims and perpetrators of trafficking in the fog of police busts, which are strained by language and cultural barriers.

"Sometimes it takes five or six interviews to break these girls, to let them know we're the good guys," said Stack, noting that many have an inherent distrust of law enforcement officers. "We haven't gotten any trafficking victims from these cases. It's not because we haven't spoken to them. It's not because we're not trying. It's just very difficult to make these girls flip."

In recent years, the Justice Department has made prosecution of trafficking cases a priority. Between 14,500 and 17,500 people are believed to be trafficked into the United States each year, said Bradley J. Schlozman, deputy assistant attorney general for the department's civil division. But most cases might be going undetected, he said.

"It's likely we're only getting the tip of the iceberg," Schlozman said. "There's a lot more trafficking than we've been able to prosecute. It's one of those things where we don't know what we don't know. I wish these cases were easier to find. We're pouring a lot of resources into this issue."

In 2000, Congress passed a sweeping trafficking bill that stiffened penalties for traffickers and introduced a visa category for undocumented victims of trafficking who were willing to assist prosecutors. According to the Justice Department, during fiscal 2004, federal prosecutors convicted 43 people charged with trafficking crimes -- a fourfold increase over 2000.

But lawmakers appear to have miscalculated the number of victims they would be able to help. Although Congress set a yearly cap of 5,000 visas for trafficking victims, as of this year, immigration officials had signed off on fewer than 600 temporary visas for such victims.

A Spanish version of this report appears in this week's El Tiempo Latino.