WASHINGTON — The slave trade is bigger than you think — even in the United States — and the Catholic Church is an integral part of the solution. Typical was the human trafficking ring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators recently uncovered.

Thugs were bringing illegal aliens across the United States-Mexico border and into “safe houses” where the women were raped repeatedly by the smugglers.

The highly lucrative trade is the third largest source of profit for organized crime, trailing slightly behind drugs and guns.

Victims often are desperately poor people who are tricked, kidnapped or sold by family members — mostly in cases of extreme poverty. They are coerced into domestic servitude or work in sweatshops. In some parts of the world, children as young as 3 are made to work, sold as camel jockeys, soldiers or prostitutes.

In the United States, labor slaves are sometimes migrants or immigrants — legal or not — duped into debt bondage and subjected to cruelty or torture.

The Vatican July 10 released a document in which it said the Church needs to play a larger role in the global fight against the trafficking of women and girls into the sex trade. Given the “dramatic increase in the number of women and girls who are sexually exploited” around the world, said the statement released by the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers, there is “an urgent need for pastoral action” that goes beyond existing programs offered by the Church.

In 2002, Pope John Paul II expressed alarm at the booming business of trade in human persons, calling it a “shocking offense against human dignity and a grave violation of fundamental human rights” and one of the most “pressing political, social, and economic problems associated with the process of globalization.”

According to Nyssa Mestas, a grants and program administrator at the Office of Migration and Refugee Services for the U.S. bishops’ conference, victims of slavery in the United States are often mistaken for illegal immigrants working in factories or sweatshops.

“They have some particular vulnerability: They might be trying to feed their families back home and hear about work as a domestic overseas, or might trust a friend or family member who promises them a job, and then sells them for his own gain,” Mestas said. “They travel a distance, out of their familiar zones and don't know the language or laws, or even where they are sometimes.

“Once they arrive on foreign turf,” she said, “traffickers may confiscate a person's legal documents, brainwash or beat them into submission, or threaten harm to their families back home.”

Mestas said that other victims know they are being smuggled and agree to pay a certain fee. Once across the border, smugglers might sell them as slaves. Smugglers also use another trick: They charge extortion fees of more than three or more times the agreed amount, and then add charges for room and board, making debts impossible to pay off.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently announced the release of the 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report. According to the report, an estimated 800,000 people are pressed into slavery across borders each year. Approximately 80% are women and girls, and up to 50% are minors. Authorities believe that approximately 18,000 slaves enter the United States through established black market trade routes each year.

According to the Helsinki Commission — the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitors human rights violations — the largest number of people trafficked into the United States come from East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, Europe and Eurasia.

The United States — along with other affluent countries such as France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands — is a “destination point,” where consumer demand for slaves is high. According to Marie Smith, international director for Feminists for Life, current statistics do not account for years of accumulated numbers of victims, or for those traded intra-regionally worldwide.

In a recent editorial, Smith also warned about American children who are trafficked within U.S. borders, victims of a “homegrown” sex trafficking industry.

Despite the growing consciousness and increased efforts to combat trafficking on the part of the United States and other governments, the slave trade is thriving. Consumerism, war, and poverty, along with an increasing disparity between the haves and have-nots in the global economy maintain supply and demand.

Steve Wagner, director of the Department of Health and Human Services Rescue and Restore program, said the collaboration of the Church, law enforcement, community and faith-based leaders, medical personnel, social services and alert citizens is crucial for combating slavery.

Rescue and Restore's “Look Beneath the Surface Campaign” is a multi-pronged collaboration that works by disseminating information to people who are encountering victims of trafficking and might not know it. The Department of Justice and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are responsible for investigating and prosecuting perpetrators.

In the largest case to date, 85 Peruvians were rescued from slavery in Long Island, N.Y., due to the joint efforts of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, local law enforcement and Catholic Charities. Working in local shops and living in a hotel, the Peruvians were forced to turn over their paychecks to traffickers.

Wagner said the Church's involvement in these efforts is key.

“One thing that is important is that the Church ought to have a special concern, and is particularly sensitive to this because of the legacy of Pope John Paul and his Theology of the Body,” he said. “The roots of the problem stem from social problems, such as domestic violence, pornography and abortion. The objectification of an individual caught in trafficking is one of the most egregious examples of turning people into objects.”

Health and Human Services involves the Church at the local level. Wagner said that the Church is often the “first responder.”

Many victims, he said, come from a faith background and turn to priests, religious or those whose Catholic sensibilities foster a sense of trust. Some victims, he said, are allowed in public only to go to a doctor or to attend church.

School Sister of Notre Dame Mary Ellen Dougherty, project director for Stop the Trafficking of People, said, “There is an assumption that the problem is somewhere else, that it is too horrible to be here. Most people are incredulous when they hear about the horrors of trafficking in our own backyard.”

The U.S. bishops’ conference receives one of the largest grants from the Department of Health and Human Services. In turn, the Office of Migration and Refugee Services awards grant money to programs across the country.

Rescue and Restore, active in 14 cities, has also begun to enlist the aid of dioceses that are willing to participate in teaching parishioners how to recognize and respond to potential victims in their midst.

In New Jersey, home state of Rep. Chris Smith, a Catholic who has addressed this issue in Congress, several trafficking rings have been broken. According to Wagner, the Archdiocese of Newark has begun to hold parish-based seminars to raise awareness.

In addition, Covenant House operates a trafficking hotline. It receives calls nationwide and directs callers to appropriate resources. Local Catholic Charities offices frequently provide a range of services to victims.

The “Look Beneath the Surface” campaign provides a toll-free number to report possible victims. Because of the danger involved to victims and their rescuers, those who recognize victims are advised not to attempt rescues on their own, but to call the hotline 1 (888) 373-7888.

Irene Lagan is based in Washington, D.C.