(The Center Square) – Another Polk County Sheriff’s Office undercover operation has led to the arrest of 219 people allegedly involved in human trafficking, 35 of whom were in the U.S. illegally.
Eighteen were from other states. Two charged with human trafficking were from Chicago and Orlando.
The announcement came after the sheriff’s office arrested over 200 people in an undercover operation in February, including 24 victims who’d been smuggled into Texas through Mexico, were brought into Florida and forced into the sex trade.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd warned Americans, saying, “wake up, there’s a crisis at the southern border.”
After the operation, he said, “Did you hear what I said? Thirty-five of them [those who were arrested] should not have been in the United States. But they were. They were here as suspects. They were also here as victims. They were forced, indentured, into having to be here to pay off their transportation debt [being smuggled into the U.S.] among other issues.”
The traffickers who were illegally in the U.S. are citizens of the Bahamas, Chile, Columbia, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico and Venezuela.
“It’s important to understand that of those who were here illegally, three were victims of human trafficking, 18 were prostitutes and 12 were johns,” Judd said. “But the thing that’s most compelling to me other than the fact that they are here illegally, and they shouldn’t be in our country, being a victim or victimizing others, was that they were paying off the coyotes.”
Coyotes are human smugglers who are critical to Mexican cartel human smuggling operations. Multiple coyotes cover thousands of miles primarily guiding foreign nationals first through Central America into Mexico, then through Mexico and into the U.S. They also operate along the U.S.-Canada border.
“This is real,” Judd said. “For those of you who think the border issue only pertains to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona or California you couldn’t be more wrong. The border crisis is a crisis for every state in the union. For a lot of victims, it is a border crisis.”
Those arrested in this operation had a total of 985 previous misdemeanor charges and 680 previous felony charges, Judd said, adding that they “are not all innocent victims.”
Two were charged with human trafficking and two others are under investigation, Judd said. “This is a big deal,” he said, because it’s hard to charge traffickers because their victims are too scared to identify them.
Freddy Escalona, of Chicago, Illinois, was charged with human trafficking and deriving proceeds from prostitution, both felonies.
“Escalona allegedly loaned a victim money to fix her car and made her prostitute herself to pay back the money. He drove the victim to the undercover location and was taken into custody,” according to the sheriff’s office. He told detectives he had “‘several females that he worked’ who paid him to transport them and ‘keep them safe.’”
Maria Guzman of Orlando was charged with human trafficking and deriving proceeds after she was arrested for allegedly trafficking two victims from a hotel in Orlando, including arranging their prostitution and profiting from their earnings.
“Not only did we arrest more suspects during this single operation than we have ever arrested before, we identified 21 human trafficking victims,” Judd said.
The undercover human trafficking operation was led by the PCSO Vice Unit working with detectives of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office and eight police departments.
Of the 219 they arrested, 83 were arrested for soliciting a prostitute and traveling to the undercover location to negotiate having sex in exchange for money. Seventeen were arrested for deriving proceeds from prostitution or aiding and abetting prostitutes; eight were arrested for driving prostitutes to the undercover location.
The operation led to 44 felonies and 242 misdemeanors charges. Among those who were arrested, 41 told detectives they are married; 13 said they receive government assistance.
Forty-two suspects brought illegal drugs to the location, enabling detectives to seize fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana. Two suspects brought firearms to the undercover location.
The ages of those arrested were between 18 and 76.
