Super Bowl Sex Trafficking Stings Net Dozens of Arrests and Recovered Victims

Authorities arrested nearly 30 people and recovered more than 70 victims across the Bay Area during heightened human trafficking investigations around Super Bowl LV, the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office announced Thursday.

The push, led by the office’s Human Trafficking Task Force, included dozens of law enforcement agencies and community organizations that carried out nearly 40 operations in counties surrounding Santa Clara during the lead-up to the game this month.

Among the 73 victims of trafficking who were recovered, 10 were minors, including a 12-year-old in Oakland, according to the district attorney’s office.

“We are literally looking for that one 12-year-old or that one child or one adult whose voice isn’t heard,” said Cheryl Csiky, the executive director of advocacy group In Our Backyard.

Advocates say the heightened attention to human trafficking in the Bay Area underscored the impact of collaboration in recovering victims — and could serve as a model for expanding such efforts regularly.

“Human trafficking happens every single day,” said Sharan Dhanoa, who directs the South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking. “The hope is that we can kind of replicate that in the future and not have it just be dependent on a sporting event.”

For the two weeks ahead of the Feb. 8 game, the Human Trafficking Task Force set up a command center in Sunnyvale that included 20 analysts from various agencies who responded to tips and coordinated with agents from Monterey to Sacramento to make arrests, according to the district attorney’s office.

“Operations that often take weeks took minutes in the enhanced Human Trafficking Tactical Operations Center,” it said in a statement on Thursday.

Such operations are common around the Super Bowl, and Bay Area authorities intend to focus similar anti-trafficking efforts ahead of World Cup games at Levi’s Stadium this summer.

Dhanoa said that, in part, this is because major economic draws to an area can increase demand for sex trafficking.

“Economics drives exploitation,” she told KQED.

However, Dhanoa said, the high volume of arrests and recoveries is also a reflection of law enforcement agencies being able to tap into additional resources that aren’t available year-round.

“This effort shows that when we’re all in a room together and have this opportunity to all work our resources in one place and our strategies, it’s a much quicker process,” Csiky said. “It just matters how much manpower is put into the effort.”

Both Dhanoa and Csiky said the operation’s focus on recovering victims of trafficking was especially significant. Dhanoa said some similar operations in the past have focused more on arrests of traffickers and less on victim identification and contact with potential survivors.

But while the operations can lead to recoveries of trafficking victims, some sex work advocates say they also negatively affect those who aren’t being trafficked.

Maxine Doogan, who describes herself as a “working prostitute of 30-plus years,” said that when such operations are going on, it puts her and other sex workers in an “economically disadvantaged position.”

“It’s really hard for people to turn down opportunities to make money, because this time of year is always traditionally very slow,” she told KQED. During such operations, she said, “anybody that was new, I wouldn’t answer their call. I would be too scared.”

“I couldn’t risk having an arrest, and then having to dig myself out of that while I’m trying to provide housing and food for myself and my children,” she said.

Dhanoa acknowledged that an unintended consequence of these operations has sometimes been arresting “individuals who don’t identify as survivors.”

Lt. Josh Singleton, the anti-trafficking task force’s commander, said Santa Clara County does not criminalize sex work.

Still, he said, the department treats commercial sex workers as “potential victims.”

“Our team always takes a victim-centered, trauma-informed approach,” Singleton told KQED. “It can be very challenging to distinguish the difference between a commercial sex worker who’s working independently on their own versus someone who’s being trafficked by somebody else.”

According to Singleton, the task force’s 29 arrests were for pimping, pandering, human trafficking of an adult or human trafficking of a minor. An additional 36 commercial sex buyers were cited or arrested for solicitation.