Not prostitution this time, but young African teen girls worked in American mall hair salons as corn-rower creators.
Braiding the hair of girls who could have been descendants of Africans enslaved in the US.
The girls’ families sent them to the United States after being assured they would receive a better education. But once they arrived, they were forced to work in hair braiding shops across the Newark area — just a short drive from New York City, right in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.
“My dad … worked hard so I could go to school, so when my auntie came and told my family that I could go to a school in the U.S. … they trusted her,” she said. “Everyone was happy about it.”
The girls worked in the salons right out in the open, in front of customers. They were on their feet all day, sometimes for more than 12 hours, weaving intricate and elaborate hair braids, seven days a week.
This went on for more than five years.
At times, they were forced to braid the hair of American teenagers no older than they were — girls who were free and had no idea the people braiding their hair were slaves.
In one of the many ironies in the case, the customers whose hair was braided by the slave girls were mostly African-American women, many of whom could have been descendants of slaves brought to America generations ago.
After months of surveillance, the ICE agents raided the houses in 2007. Inside, they found the girls and mattresses on the floor. The traffickers had hidden bags of cash and the girls’ passports.
Peter Edge, who led the team of agents, said none of the girls’ customers ever called officials to help.
“Hundreds of people came into these salons, they probably witnessed things out of the ordinary,” said Edge, special agent in charge of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations in Newark.
“These girls were shielded from the outside world, virtually hidden in plain sight … from everything else that was around them.”
Edge and the girls said several customers asked about the girls’ ages, and the girls — following the orders of their captors — lied and said they were 18.
“I wish one of my customers … would have gone to police,” Nicole said. “I wish they would have helped me.”
I think what’s interesting is that often the slavers are the same race and even gender as those they are exploiting. You would think that would cause a guilty conscience. Apparently not.