New York
THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT (WITH NAMES DELETED IN ACCORDANCE WITH TER RULES) OF AN ARTICLE THAT APPEARED IN THE N.Y. DAILY NEWS ON SUNDAY, 6/3/12 ON PAGES 16 & 17-FYI
Small Mexican town of Tenancingo is major source of sex trafficking pipeline to New York
Families of pimps send young victims to Queens where they are often forced into 'delivery girl' prostitution
By Erica Pearson / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Sunday, June 3, 2012, 2:20 AM
Corey Sipkin/New York Daily News
Luxurious homes said to belong to sex trafficking families dot the landscape of Tenancingo, a small town about 80 miles from Mexico City.
TENANCINGO, TLAXCALA — In this small Mexican town that sends sex slaves to New York, little boys dream of growing up to be pimps.
Gaudy gabled houses that rise above gated walls are proof of the profits to be made from funneling “delivery girls” to Roosevelt Ave. in Queens.
The town of 10,000, about 80 miles from Mexico City, is Mexico’s undisputed cradle of sex trafficking, one end of a pipeline that leads directly to our city’s streets.Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s New York field office arrested 32 sex traffickers last year; 26 of them were from Tenancingo.
Each family sends its youngest and most handsome men across Mexico to pose as salesmen with nice clothes and fancy cars.
They woo rural women waiting at bus stops or taking Sunday strolls in the park. Once the women are seduced, they are coerced into prostitution.
The women are held inside the Tenancingo “security houses” — where some say they were repeatedly raped. If they have children, the kids are kept in the town for leverage after they are dispatched to red-light districts.
Some go to Mexico City. Many end up in Queens, where johns can order them for delivery by calling numbers advertised on cards, key chains or bottle openers, authorities say.
One 24-year-old survivor said she spent two months in Tenancingo after her “boyfriend” took her there to meet his family.He turned out to be a pimp and she wound up in New York. After escaping from her Queens apartment in 2009, she helped ICE catch the family ringleader — but her nightmare is not over.
Officials said each prostitute they bring to New York — where they service up to 35 johns a day — nets the traffickers about $100,000 a year. The money is wired back to Tenancingo, where the pastel fortresses grow ever larger.
In Tenancingo, Tlaxcala, a little town of 10,000 that has become world famous as the center of the country's international sex trafficking trade, families of pimps are known for their large, gaudy homes.
In March, a 25 year old man pleaded guilty in Brooklyn Federal Court to luring a woman named to the U.S. and forcing her into prostitution. Six other family members have been charged in New York.
One of Tenancingo’s most notorious families was busted by ICE after a tip to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.
Two brothers got 50 years in prison in 2004 after admitting they forced at least eight women, once wooed with chocolates and teddy bears, into prostitution in Queens.
A 4-foot-10 matriarch woman, was dubbed “mini-madam” after she was extradited to New York. Court sketches from her 2008 plea show her with her white hair pulled up in pigtails.
While Tlaxcala and other states have passed laws making human trafficking a crime, punishment in Mexico is rare. Before last year, victims’ families didn’t even have any official way to report trafficking in Tlaxcala Since then, there have been 120 complaints and 24 arrests — but not a single conviction.
A stricter federal anti-trafficking bill has been passed but not signed into law. A Mexican congresswoman said she hopes the tougher standards will deter trafficking. But she knows history is not on her side.A Tenancingo legend holds that pimping goes back to the arrival of a conquistador in 1519. A warrior was is said to have offered virgins to the conquering Spaniards.“They got blankets in exchange,” the Congrwswoman said.
-- Modified on 6/5/2012 12:15:22 AM