The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation has ramped up hiring and training ahead of a crackdown on illicit massage businesses that engage in sex trafficking or labor trafficking.
Executive Director Brian E. Francis revealed plans for the effort in testimony today at the Texas Senate. Inspectors from the agency, accompanied by local law enforcement, “are going to go to every illicit massage business in the state,” Francis said. That would cover an estimated 1,069 locations.
“We will not announce where we’re going to start. I don’t want to give away too much. But we are coming,” Francis said.
Texas is a hotspot for labor trafficking and sex trafficking, especially Houston, and some massage businesses in the state are linked to Chinese organized crime syndicates. The goal of TDLR’s crackdown is to prevent traffickers from using massage businesses as fronts for illegal sex trafficking.
According to Dr. Vanessa Bouché, a human trafficking researcher at Texas Christian University, illicit massage businesses violate a raft of state and federal laws covering trafficking, debt bondage, money laundering, visa and immigration fraud, smuggling, and tax evasion.
Bouché has researched massage businesses in Texas using video surveillance. She recounted meeting a woman at a massage business during her research in Houston whom she believed had been trafficked.
“She pretended not to speak English. She worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day. She had only been in Texas for a month. I found out that she had moved to Texas from Flushing, Queens, which is the hub of the Chinese illicit massage business network.”
State inspectors are working from a database of licensed businesses, plus acting on outside tips. Both Francis and Bouché mentioned an online review site, which Francis called “Yelp for perverts.”
TDLR’s crackdown is enabled by extra funding provided by the Legislature last year. TDLR has added 12 new positions and organized an anti-trafficking rapid response team. “That group is ready, they’re been there now for nine weeks. They’ve been in extensive training,” said Francis. Last week during training they carried out 23 inspections and made eight referrals to the human trafficking hotline.
“When we do come across a survivor, we are going to connect them to resources,” he said. “Just last week on one of our training efforts we went into a massage facility and uncovered labor trafficking. An individual there, the male manager, was working at the facility seven days a week 14 hours a day, unable to leave. He looked emaciated.”
Before this year, TDLR had only one person working on anti-trafficking.
The Texas Occupations Code ch. 455 regulates massage establishments. It prohibits sexual contact in a massage establishment and requires each massage business to post a sign concerning services and assistance to victims of human trafficking. These signs must be in English, Spanish, Korean, and Chinese and they must include a number for a toll-free victim hotline.
TDLR also regulates nail salons, another business area in which labor trafficking and sex trafficking has occurred.
Liquor Agents
Another agency involved in anti-trafficking work is the Texas Alcoholic Beverages Commission (TABC). Unlike TDLR, this agency has its own law enforcement arm of sworn peace officers.
TABC Commissioner Kevin Lilly said today that its agents have “essentially unfettered access to anyone with a liquor license,” which enables them to conduct inspections at strip clubs, bars, and other areas where sex trafficking may be occurring.
However, Lilly recommended that the Legislature give the agency more oversight over bring-your-own-beverage (BYOB) establishments, which he said some establishments use to bypass state oversight.
“We did an extensive surveillance operation of a bar in San Antonio. We finally found out that it had underage employees and they were involved in sex trafficking,” Lilly said. “We were able to shut down the establishment and also take away the (liquor) license. The next day they reopened as a BYOB. All the effort that we did to shut them down as a business the very next day they opened as a BYOB, essentially thumbing their nose at law enforcement.”
Lilly also recommended requiring e-verify for employees of strip clubs. “There’s no way for us to electronically verify that these individuals are of age to be working (there),” he said.
