Transcription
These girls were victims of something hard to believe, something you might never expect. Something that happened in plain sight.
You are looking at girls who were held as slaves in America, not for a week or a month, but for years.
Can you tell us about what it was like having someone else control all of your movements, everything you did?
It was like being, you know, being trapped, you know, being in a cage. It's hard, horrible. You know, like sometimes there's not enough food for us to eat. No freedom at all.
Nicole and Zena, along with another 20 girls like them, were brought to the U.S. from their homes in the West African nations of Ghana and Togo nearly a decade ago. Barely teens, promised an American education, they were instead enslaved in Newark, New Jersey.
What did the traffickers take from you?
They took my childhood from me, my teenhood. They took it from me. They took my trust from me, and they took everything. They took everything away from me.
The girls were forced to work in hair-braiding salons, serving customers all day right out in the open. Their captors took all the money the girls earned—every penny.
How many days a week were you working?
Seven days a week.
How many hours a day?
Sometimes 14 hours.
This went on for 5 to 6 years. Traffickers held the girls in several houses in Newark and East Orange. The traffickers no longer live there.
This is the neighborhood where these girls were being held. And just look at it—manicured lawns, nice houses. It looks like any neighborhood in America, and it definitely doesn't look like a place where you'd expect to find slavery.
Who would commit such a crime?
These are the traffickers: Akuavi Alhalabi, the wife, was the ringleader; Lissi, the husband, and Derek, the son, were accomplices, according to court documents and law enforcement.
Why did they do it?
Money, pure and simple. They made about $4 million off the girls.
Paul Fishman is the U.S. attorney for New Jersey. His office prosecuted the case, resulting in convictions.
I think it's hard for some people to believe that in the year 2010, we have people who will actually put people in slavery. It's the most fundamental and intolerable violation of human rights.
A Newark court recently sentenced Akuavi Alhalabi to 27 years in prison. The father got 24 years, and the son 4 and a half years.
But after all the promises, she promised me, and then when I got here, all my life was messed up. No. And I always tell, like, if I knew this is how my life was going to be, I’d never come. I’d never let her take me.
The fact that my clients could be in these hair salons for so many years, braiding hair as young as 9, 10, 11, is extremely frustrating, but it's not shocking. Human trafficking is extremely profitable. It's so profitable that we're seeing some drug traffickers get out of drug trafficking and into human trafficking.
Zena took me on a walk where the girls used to walk every morning to work, from the house to the hair salon down the street.
Slave girls walking in plain sight of an entire community.
I always thought of running, but I didn’t know anybody, and I didn’t know where to go.
Finally, after 5 years, a tip came to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. These girls were shielded from the outside world, virtually hidden in plain sight.
After months of surveillance, ICE agents raided the houses. Inside, they found the girls, mattresses on the floor, and filthy conditions. The traffickers had hidden bags of cash and the girls' passports.
Something else the agents found: a notebook the girls used to track the tips they received at the hair salon. Ironically, on the cover of that notebook was a picture of the Statue of Liberty.
After so much pain, the girls, now young women, were free.
It was a good day because, you know, it helped my life. I was so happy that I was out from the jail. All I did was cry. It was, I don't know, it was overwhelming.
I told myself, "She finally, you know, she finally got what she deserved." She did. She did really, really wrong. She treated us badly, and I just—she was heartless. When I think about it, she was heartless, and I'm happy that she's caught.
Amber Lyon, CNN, Newark, New Jersey.