Their workers lived in debt bondage, picking oranges for a handful of change each day. They were forced to return these meager earnings to the brothers in exchange for their original transport to the camps, housing in squalid conditions, and food purchased at inflated prices from the brothers' own grocery store.

The laborers, who were pistol-whipped and beaten for any insubordination, were often told the story of one ill-fated laborer who tried to escape: Crew bosses caught him, busted his kneecaps with a hammer, and then threw his body from a speeding car.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), which sent one of its own members into the farm camps undercover to help federal agents bring down the trafficking ring, estimates that up to 10 percent of U.S. farm laborers are enslaved. This example of modern day slavery, the trafficking of human beings, is unfortunately far from unique.

International human rights organizations call the human trafficking problem an "epidemic" across the globe: children are enslaved in granite quarries in Nigeria or sold by their parents on the streets of India to work ten hours a day making handicrafts for tourists; women are kidnapped from Uzbekistan or Thailand and forced into prostitution in brothels in Israel, Mumbai or Cameroon; generations of families are enslaved by debt bondage in Mauritania; women are trafficked from Laos and Cambodia to serve as household slaves in the United Kingdom or the U.S.

Reliable statistics on the size of the problem are as hard to find as solutions. The U.S. State Department estimates that between 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked worldwide each year, between 14,500 to 17,500 across the United States' own borders.

But many who work on the problem of human trafficking say any numbers amount to guesswork. Victims rarely seek help because they fear violence or state deportation, and when trafficking activity does come to light, local law enforcement officials often fail to recognize it, treating trafficking as an illegal migration issue, says Ann Jordan, a leading human trafficking expert with Global Rights, a human rights advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.

"I don't trust any of the statistics," Jordan says. "But I know it's a big enough problem that we need to work on it."

The Modern Context of Human Trafficking

Human trafficking first began to command significant attention on the global policy stage in the mid- to late-'90s, as governments stumbled across transnational organized crime syndicates that had added humans to the drugs and weapons already being distributed through their networks. (Today, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates that human trafficking accounts for more than $9.5 billion in worldwide profits.)

In 2000, the United Nations Crime Commission issued its first treaty on the issue, outlining a protocol for recognizing and punishing human trafficking. While the protocol was hailed as a huge step forward in raising international awareness, human rights advocates were chagrined to see the problem framed primarily as a law enforcement issue, rather than as a human rights or victims' problem.

That skew toward enforcement (which drives government policies, sets the agenda for discussion, and steers the flow of resources) has persisted, Jordan says. "Unfortunately, the law enforcement approach ignores all the geopolitical and social influences that create the problem of trafficking in the first place," she says.

Human rights advocates point to the United States' own Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 as an example of the enforcement framing. The law set up a Trafficking in Persons (TIP) office in the State Department that issues annual reports rating countries based on the severity of their trafficking problem. Countries listed in the bottom tier of the rankings face withdrawal of all nonhumanitarian economic aid. Countries are given 90 days to take action to remedy the problem or face sanctions.

"The U.S. government has had a huge impact on how the world is addressing trafficking because of the sanctions regime it has set up," says Janie Chuang, who teaches in Washington College of Law's international human rights law clinic at American University. "We've seen a proliferation of laws passed on trafficking throughout the world. Is it good activity? I think that's questionable."

The fact that the countries remaining on the sanctions list are also the ones with which the United States typically has strained or nonexistent relations (for example Burma and Cuba), leads many in the human rights community to view the TIP reports as somewhat political, Chuang says. That perception was further bolstered by the inclusion of Venezuela in the 2004 report, which human rights groups say does not have a noticeably larger trafficking problem than many of its Latin American peer countries that did not make the watch list. The U.S. was accused of failing to pass on a warning about an attempted coup of the leftist government in Venezuela a few months before the TIP report was issued.

"Frankly, [Venezuela's inclusion] was seen by many as more of a political maneuver than being related to trafficking," Chuang says.

U.S. Ambassador John Miller, who heads the TIP program for the State Department, says that countries' TIP ratings are in no way political. He points out that the ratings are less about the overall size of a country's trafficking problem than its government's willingness to take action. The lowest-tier ratings of some "rogue states" or countries with poor relations with the U.S. are due in part to the lack of cooperation from those countries once cited, he noted.

"We give countries three months to step up their response to trafficking before the list is final," Miller says. "When there are better relations between countries, there are more chances for steps being taken. When Turkey and Greece were cited as lowest-tier countries, they denounced the report, but they made some efforts and didn't stay in that category. When Cuba was listed, Fidel Castro denounced the report and refused to take any steps to address the situation."

An Unlikely Alliance

Another contentious issue around addressing human trafficking is the treatment of prostitution. Feminist and evangelical Christian groups have formed a powerful alliance to encourage crackdowns on prostitution as a way to combat trafficking, though many in the international community object to the failure to distinguish between illegal sex trade and sex trafficking, in which women are kidnapped or deceived, transported and held against their will. While evangelicals and feminists say prostitution is inherently exploitative and creates a safe haven for traffickers, other human rights advocates say that shutting down brothels neither directly targets the sex trafficking rings, nor helps women who have resorted to prostitution.

In a highly publicized case, an evangelical Christian group called International Justice Mission (IJM), aided in raids on brothels in Thailand in December 2003 that "rescued" women and then locked them in an orphanage. Within days, 24 of the 43 women had run away, many of them to return to the brothels, which they saw as their only way to survive and earn money.

After South Korea was pressured on its human trafficking record, the country launched a crackdown on prostitution in 2004, shutting down many brothels and increasing penalties for prostitution clients. Hundreds of prostitutes took to the streets in protest, some even starting hunger strikes, to protect their livelihood, Jordan says.

"We need programs that are focused on empowering people to better their lives in a safe way," she added. "Closing brothels and throwing women into the streets is not a way to empower the women who are prostitutes and certainly not an effective way to combat trafficking."

Miller says that while raids and brothel shutdowns that leave women without transitional support are not ideal, those tactics have a legitimate role to play in reducing human trafficking.

"I don't think IJM should be criticized for focusing on rescue anymore than a shelter with empty beds should be criticized," he said. "Both types of approaches serve a part of the problem. IJM took on a unique role by realizing that you can't just set up shelters and expect women to show up because of all the corruption and coercion involved.

"If some of those rescued didn't get into a shelter, that's unfortunate. That's why we're working in several Southeast Asian countries to make sure that there is a shelter available when there is a rescue."

Jordan says that the U.S. State Department's stance on prostitution has fundamentally changed the makeup of the groups at the fore of fighting trafficking internationally, channeling funds to evangelical anti-prostitution groups with no history of work in human trafficking. Miller counters that faith-based groups "run a majority of the shelter programs" and that he anticipated that grants to faith-based organization would rise to 30 percent of the total amount his office spends.

The United States' moral agenda approach also skews enforcement and remediation efforts worldwide toward addressing sex trafficking and cracking down on prostitution, Jordan says, while spending less attention on labor trafficking, which necessitates wrestling with complex issues of corporate supply chains and immigration policy.

Miller says sex trafficking commands more attention and resources simply because it represents the bulk of human trafficking.

"We are concerned with all kinds of trafficking—sex trafficking, forced labor, forced domestic servitude, indentured sweatshop labor, Miller says. "But if you're saying that more attention is given to sex trafficking, you're right. That's not true only in the United States. The reason is that it is the judgment of most people involved in these issues around the world that sex trafficking is the leading component of slavery."

Promising Solutions

While the U.S. State department celebrates the increase in international prosecutions of trafficking to almost 3,000 worldwide, Jordan is optimistic about some of the holistic initiatives of citizen sector organizations and advocacy groups that directly address the underlying conditions making people vulnerable to trafficking.

The Coalition for Immokalee Workers, the grassroots organization that helped bring down the Ramos brothers, targets the poor labor conditions of agricultural work in the United States to bring about change. "It's the existence of sweatshoplike conditions that allow slavery to flourish," says Julia Perkins of the CIW.

"Agricultural workers don't have benefits of any kind, their wages are not regulated, they are excluded from organizing, and as a result, it's easier to keep them against their will. You don't see modern day slavery in auto plants where workers have a voice and rights in the workplace."

In a broader attack on that system, CIW sponsored a three-year boycott of the Taco Bell fast food restaurant chain and its parent company Yum Brands, Inc., the world's largest fast-food corporation. More than 22 college campuses either removed Yum Brands restaurants or blocked them from locating there, as a result of student protests, Perkins says.

High profile advocates of the boycott included former President Jimmy Carter and actor Martin Sheen. The boycott pressured Taco Bell to increase the price it pays for its tomatoes and take greater responsibility for abuses in its supply chain. (Farmworkers today usually earn 40 cents for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes they pick, which is about the same rate that was paid in 1978, and they must pick two tons of tomatoes to earn about $50).

That boycott came to a close last week, when Taco Bell agreed to CIW's demands: the company will pay 1 cent more per pound of tomatoes, an increase that will be passed directly to workers; it will also help compel growers to come to the table to discuss human rights abuses; and the company will monitor and investigate abuses in its supply chain.

"This is part of our larger campaign to address slavery not on a case-by-case basis, but to eliminate the root causes of slavery," Perkins said.

That type of big-picture thinking is exactly what's needed to make bigger strides toward reducing human trafficking, according to Jordan. "We need to have a broader dialogue that involves not just organizations working on trafficking directly, but those working on its underlying causes," Jordan says. "We simply need more energy expended on finding solutions on the input side of the problem."