Federal agents had sex with victims
PHOENIX — The women were forced to live and work in filth and near darkness, the federal agent said, surviving on only the tips they received from performing massages and sexual favours.
Lon Weigand, deputy special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Arizona, described them as “Asian females” who may be sex-trafficking victims. He praised the joint operation between federal agents and local police in western Arizona that led to their rescue and credited “investigative techniques” with helping to crack a “transnational criminal organization.”
What Weigand didn’t say at that September 2018 press conference — although HSI documents show some supervisors knew — was that federal undercover agents repeatedly paid for and engaged in sex acts with suspected victims.
That fact, coupled with HSI’s refusal to let its agents testify, caused the collapse of a case that was more than three years in the making. All felony charges against the alleged ringleaders were dropped. And sex-trafficking experts said the women were likely re-traumatized.
Defence attorneys were outraged when they learned of the agents’ actions.
“That’s our tax money,” said attorney Josephine Hallam, whose grandfather was former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. “Shouldn’t they be at the border, or doing something with terrorists rather than getting sex acts?”
This project was produced by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, an initiative of the Scripps Howard Foundation in honour of the late news industry executive and pioneer Roy W. Howard.
AUTHORIZED ACTIVITY
HSI is the largest investigative unit in the Department of Homeland Security, which was created in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Some 7,000 HSI agents have wide-ranging authority to investigate a variety of cross-border crimes, such as sex- and human-trafficking. But for all its power and scope, HSI has received relatively little public attention, even though internal inspector-general reports have criticized it for lax accountability and oversight. HSI agents also have been involved in shootings of civilians around the country, an investigation by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism revealed in February.
“HSI is committed to placing the safety of potential victims at the forefront of every investigation,” said Yasmeen Pitts O’Keefe, a spokeswoman with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, HSI’s parent agency. “Conduct by a limited number of HSI agents involved in the investigation was not consistent with HSI policy.”
But HSI’s own documents, statements by local police, and the federal government’s response refute the idea this was a rogue action.
Police in Lake Havasu City and Bullhead City, near the border with California and Nevada where the investigation occurred, said they were told by HSI that undercover agents may engage in sex acts with suspects.
“Detectives were informed by HSI that the undercover sexual activity was authorized,” said Emily Fromelt, a Bullhead police spokeswoman.
It is illegal in Arizona, as in other states, for police to engage in sexual activity with subjects of an investigation.
A leaked policy handbook, confirmed by retired HSI senior agent Louie Garcia, describes how, with supervisor approval, undercover agents can engage in “otherwise illegal” activity. While it gives some hypotheticals, the handbook says nothing about undercover sex. The existence of such a handbook was confirmed in 2017 when the Department of Homeland Security released its “HSI Special Agent Manual Index” in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The ICE spokeswoman said she couldn’t comment on any document not released by the agency.
Garcia and a former HSI administrator said agents were not allowed to have sexual contact with investigative subjects. But Garcia said he couldn’t remember that in writing.
“I don’t recall the policy manuals saying you can’t have sex with human-trafficking victims,” Garcia said. “I just know that’s something we are not allowed to do.”
The sex-trafficking investigation began in May 2016 after Havasu police received complaints that local massage parlours were being used as houses of prostitution. Police called in HSI in 2018 on suspicion the women might be victims of humantrafficking.
Over a nearly five-month period, HSI undercover agents documented 17 sexual encounters with women working in eight massage parlours. Many of the contemporaneous reports were signed by supervisors. Ultimately, two women were designated as victims, and their whereabouts are unknown. Two other women charged with prostitution were initially put in ICE detention, though only one still faces deportation hearings.
“These girls were victimized again by the agency who was supposed to be protecting them,” Garcia said. He was one of more than 40 police policy experts, sextrafficking researchers, law enforcement professionals and attorneys consulted by the Howard Center. Reporters also obtained more than 2,100 pages of police reports, photos and video, as well as HSI and court records.
Initially, Garcia said he was told, agency officials in Washington D.C., “wanted heads to roll,” but the issue quietly went away. The U.S. Attorney’s Office received a “brief” call from ICE internal investigators, a spokeswoman told the Howard Center, but no federal violation was apparent “from the information provided.” In the end, only a low-level supervisor was disciplined, Garcia said he was told by agency insiders.
Of the nine people originally charged in the investigation, only three pleaded guilty to attempted pandering, prostitution and solicitation — all before the HSI agents’ actions became publicly known.
The Associated Press