Jaime Aguilar-Hernandez was a coyote smuggling people from Mexico to El Norte. One was a Guatemalan woman he allegedly forced into prostitution along the way.

Aguilar-Hernandez was caught in Stockton, convicted of four counts of alien smuggling last November and sentenced to 36 months. But he was acquitted on the more serious charge of hostage-taking, said John Vincent, an assistant U.S. attorney in Sacramento.

Victims of human trafficking can be found throughout California -- even in the Sacramento region, Vincent said. "They're working in sweatshops, working in massage parlors."

But such cases are hard to prosecute because victims are often terrified to come forward for fear of being deported or beaten -- or endangering their families back home.

To help identify victims and create a safe environment for them, more than two dozen Sacramento organizations have formed a Rescue & Restore Victims of Human Trafficking coalition with the help of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Sacramento became the 18th city in the nation to form such a coalition because it's home to the three ethnic groups most likely to be victimized -- "Hispanics, Asians and Eastern Europeans," said U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott. "Asians are often forced to work in massage parlors, while Eastern European women are brought here under the guise of mail-order brides."

The coalition -- including social workers, mental health providers, church officials and local law enforcement -- was unveiled at the Sheraton Grand Hotel on Wednesday by HHS Regional Director Thomas Lorentzen, who said, "Human trafficking, quite simply, is modern-day slavery."

The U.S. government estimates that 600,000 to 800,000 of the roughly 10 million people who cross international borders every year become trafficking victims. In the United States, "between 14,500 to 17,500 people are enslaved or forced into unthinkable situations each year," Lorentzen said. "Victims are held in psychological or physical bondage, terrorized and dehumanized."

Americans who come into contact with immigrants may stumble across this modern-day version of slavery, said T. March Bell, the U.S. Department of Justice's senior prosecutor for trafficking cases.

"A cable installer in Los Angeles found a maid living in a closet," Bell said. The maid -- a Filipina immigrant -- was forced to work for an electronics executive and his doctor wife "for 10 years without pay," Bell said.

Postal workers, meter readers, English-as-a-second language teachers, labor inspectors, health care workers, apartment-house managers, Alcohol and Beverage Control inspectors, child abuse investigators and truancy officers all need to keep their eyes open, Bell said.

In Idaho, Bureau of Land Management agents found sheepherders from Peru starving to death, Bell said. Health inspectors in the Midwest found 10 Hondurans forced to work for free in a Chinese buffet restaurant, Bell said. "Their mattresses were outside the walk-in cooler."

Many of the world's poor are easy prey to traffickers who lure them with false promises, said Bell. One 16-year-old girl from Chang Mai, Thailand, was offered a job cleaning houses in the United States for 10 times her salary. "The recruiter said, 'We have a six-week training program in Bangkok,' " Bell said. "She learns about vacuums, toasters, Lemon Pledge."

Given a counterfeit Thai passport, she was flown to Los Angeles, where an airline official circumvented customs and took her out a back door, Bell said.

After she got to a so-called "safe house" in Los Angeles, she was told that the intention was to employ her as a prostitute.

Eventually, she was freed and, today, "The young girl from Thailand is doing well -- she's going to community college and living on her own."

Others are not so fortunate, Bell said.

Thai garment workers in El Monte and Latino farmworkers in the Central Valley are among those who have been to forced to work without pay.

Organized crime syndicates from China, Japan, Russia and Mexico are among those who are involved in the illegal trafficking of immigrants.

Sacramento's Rescue & Restore coalition can serve as a modern underground railroad for these victims, providing them with food, shelter, medical care, counseling, language skills, job training and legal documentation, said Vanessa Garza of the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement. Trafficking victims not only don't have to worry about being deported, they qualify for the same federal benefits as other refugees, Garza said.

Immigrants aren't the only human trafficking victims -- children can be at high risk, too, said Kaitlyn Lim of the Polaris Project, a nonprofit dedicated to helping agencies and law enforcement identify victims.

Anyone with information on possible trafficking victims can call a 24-hour hotline, (888) 373-7888, Lorentzen said.