The ads on buses and billboards around the state are dramatic, with pictures of men, women and children and declarations of "Stop Slavery," and "We are not for sale."

They are the latest in an ongoing effort by New Mexico Attorney General Gary King's office to educate law enforcement and the public about what it says is the little-known and little understood problem of modern slavery.

While many associate the term with the sex trade in Asia or cross-border trafficking, Maria Sanchez-Gagne, an assistant attorney general who oversees King's program to fight human trafficking, says most cases in New Mexico involve U.S. citizens forced into prostitution or labor.

"A lot of young women are being sold," said Sanchez-Gagne.

It's a problem whose scope is largely unknown in many states but is increasingly drawing the attention of state attorneys general, who have been pushing for more federal funding to crackdown on traffickers and provide services for their victims.

The New Mexico AG's office in January won plea agreements in two of the 12 cases that have resulted in human trafficking charges since the state became one of the last in the country to create the new crime in 2008.

Both of those, like the first conviction under the law last year, involved men forcing woman and girls into prostitution. And Sanchez-Gagne said 10 of the 12 cases to date are tied to prostitution rings, most in Albuquerque and about half involving girls or women who have been brought in from other states. In many cases, she says, the woman responded to online ads for things like modeling jobs, then found themselves enslaved.

The two other New Mexico cases involve forced labor, including the case of a Las Cruces couple accused of enslaving two relatives brought over from Indonesia to be nannies.

While 12 may seem like a small number of prosecutions for a law that has been on the books for nearly four years, much of what Sanchez-Gagne has been focused on since taking on the human trafficking issue for King is training the public and law enforcement officers to spot potential victims.

From the law enforcement side, she said it is important to train police to be able to spot woman and girls who might be being held against their will "so they can be rescued, treated humanely, rather than prosecuted for prostitution."

Oftentimes, she said, victims won't speak up for themselves. And officers and judge must understand that a victim can be held against their will without being physically restrained.

"They might think, 'They weren't chained up. Why didn't they just leave?' We need to help them understand the control this person has over them," she said.

The ads, she said, are designed to make the public more aware of the problem and to urge them to call a national hotline if they suspect someone is being enslaved.

That's what happened in the case of Dante McKay, who pleaded guilty Jan. 12 to human trafficking and tampering with evidence. He was sentenced to three years in prison for human trafficking and one and half years for tampering with evidence.

He was arrested, Sanchez-Gagne said, after he took a young woman he had forced into prostitution to a hairdresser, who called the national hotline after becoming suspicious.

Ads for the national hotline also led to the arrests last May of 47-year-old Elina Sihombing and her 54-year-old husband, David Girle, who were accused of bringing two distant cousins from Indonesia to be nannies with the promise of opportunities to go to college. Instead, federal officials allege, the couple forced the women to work long hours, first at their home in Phoenix and then at the Americas Value Inn they bought in Las Cruces, under abusive conditions and without pay.

They were arrested after another hotel employee called the national human trafficking hotline.




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