New task force will crack down on human trafficking in Sacramento, authorities say
A new effort to investigate and prosecute human trafficking in the Sacramento area will combine resources from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to root out sexual and labor-related exploitation, authorities said Tuesday.
Standing across the street from the Franklin Boulevard location where a young woman was forced to perform sexual acts in broad daylight in south Sacramento, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho, Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester and others pledged to go after organized crime groups engaged in trafficking, as well as smaller, local efforts by pimps and street gangs.
It is the third task force set up in the state, following similar efforts in San Diego and Fresno.
“It’s a crime that is happening in our neighborhoods, in our cities, to many of our most vulnerable community members,” Lester said at the news conference announcing the task force.
She cited data from Sacramento State’s Institute for Social Research showing that more than 13,000 people had been trafficked in the county between 2015 and 2020.
It was not immediately clear, Lester said, now much of that activity was coordinated by large organized crime groups or international cartels, and how much was local. But she said that among the group’s goals was to investigate those criminal sources, and develop annual reports on arrests, prosecutions and related information each year in March.
Tatum King, special agent in charge for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in San Francisco, said his agency planned to work with capital region law enforcement to investigate the connections between international crime rings and trafficking for sexual or labor reasons.
Often, he said, the trafficking involves an offer of transportation to the victim and, in the case of people forced into sex work at massage parlors, can involve both forced labor and forced sex.
International victims often do not have legal documents to legitimize their residence status in the United States, and are more easily victimized because of their fear of deportation, he and others said.
Ho said he expected even more victims to be afraid to work with law enforcement in the current political environment.
President Donald Trump and his administration have pledged to commence mass deportations of people who are in the country illegally. Such sweeps by immigration agents have already occurred in New York, Chicago, San Diego and San Jose, among other cities.
But, Ho said, laws exist to protect crime victims from deportation, and that special visa programs aimed at helping victims had not been curtailed.
He called sex trafficking in Sacramento County a “crisis” and said many of the victims forced to sell their bodies are minors. “I personally prosecuted a case where the victim was so young the trafficker forced her to remove the braces from her teeth so she would look older,” Ho said.
This story was originally published January 28, 2025 at 2:51 PM.
