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Documented on the original SlaveryMap (2008–2016). We don’t have a verifiable source on file yet. Know one?
What happened
This international sex trafficking syndicate lured a young college student, You Mi, from her home in South Korea February 2003. She was promised a well paying hostess position at a restaurant so that she could pay off her $40,000 shopping debt back home. Instead, the traffickers took her to an illicit massage parlor in LA, where she was manipulated and used to pay off her $20,000 trafficking debt. She left the Massage parlor in July 2003 $0 richer and headed on a bus for San Francisco. She found that since she was an illegal immigrant, the only available work for her that was lucrative enough to pay off her debt was sex work. She wondered into the Sun Spa, where she was immediately handed off to the "masseuse" with the most seniority. For the next four months she endured a life that she had never imagined back in Korea. The Tenderloin is where the bulk of San Francisco's 90 illicit massage parlors are concentrated, identifiable by double metal security doors, surveillance cameras and windows that are blocked out with aluminum foil, plastic garbage bags or paint. She'd spend her waking hours at Sun Spa, having sex with more than a dozen men a day, six days a week, and scurrying into secret hideaways during police raids. Her share of the rent on her apartment was $300 per week. You Mi would also have to pay $50 a day for food, a $40 weekly tip to the cook, plus a $70 weekly tip to the Sun Spa manager. She also had to pay for her wardrobe, $100 per bikini top or bottom. Her tips from customers were typically $100. See Operation Gilded Cage post for more details about trafficker.
Response and intervention
The Trafficker was found and incarcerated through Operation Gilded Cage, the bay area wide brothel raid. Once You Mi had her debts paid off, she was free to leave the Sun Spa in November, four months later. Once she left, she got to enjoy the San Francisco scenery for her first time. She had met a new boyfriend while working in the Spa, who she stayed in touch with when she left. Once she was free she found a job in a Korean restaurant, where she received minimum wage $30 tips max for serving food. Congress created the T-1 visa in 2000 as part of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, along with 20-year prison terms for sex traffickers. Prosecutors have used the law to send 109 sex traffickers to prison nationwide -- compared with just 20 in the five years before the law. On the victim side of the equation, only 1,000 T-1 visas have been issued, although 5,000 are available each year, in large part because victims must testify against their captors in exchange for the visa. You Mi wants to imprison the people who imprisoned her. She offered to testify for the government, but prosecutors turned her down because she was not part of the Operation Gilded Cage crackdown. Ivy Lee, an attorney specializing in human trafficking at Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach in San Francisco, helped You Mi apply for the T-1 visa. After a five-month investigation, the government concluded that You Mi was a sex-trafficking victim and granted her the visa on July 25. Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach in San Francisco