“In May, 25 people were charged in federal court with running eight brothels. Eighteen of the suspects are illegal immigrants, according to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court. Five of the brothels operated in Minneapolis; the others were in Richfield, West St. Paul and Austin, Minn.
When the women arrived from Mexico and Central America, their passports and other identifying documents were taken away and they were forced into prostitution. In one night, more than 80 men paid two women for sex in a south Minneapolis house.
Last year, the Legislature commissioned the first state report on human trafficking, which found that 43 percent of the 119 human service providers it surveyed had helped a victim of human trafficking — and that they were helping about 200 victims at the time of the survey.”
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